Vol 2: Not for Turning
by spondoolix
Summary: Sequel to 'Breaking the Cycle'. Hal is prevented from returning to himself when he is besieged by those after a Hellish revenge for his treatment of Belinda Weaver. COMPLETE. THANKS FOR THE REVIEWS 3 SPON Hal/Tom/Alex/Milo & OCs
1. 4362

**Not for Turning**

**This is a follow up from 'Breaking the Cycle'. I'm planning on a chapter a month until Series 5 kicks off... Spon x **

**I own nothing but my OCs - who I love, cherish and terrorise in equal measure .**

* * *

**Part 1: "And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us."**

**Chapter 1: 4362**

Somewhere in a basement, just to the left of nowhere, there is a corridor. It is long, cold and smells of old air. Black fur creeps up the walls, as if the old plaster work has been dipped into the earth and soaks up the sodden ground like a rotten dye. The walls are painted a kind of baby-sick green, punctuated with perfectly square enamel doors from floor to ceiling for as far as he is able to see. Each door is three feet wide, three feet high. Their metal bottoms drip a river of brown water onto the floor. Worst of all, it is cramped.

Milo dislikes cramped spaces. Though, truthfully, he dislikes everything about this place. He dislikes the depths towards which he has had to fight his way. He dislikes the wet. He dislikes the cold. He dislikes the colour, the mould, the half-lit darkness. He dislikes not knowing what is behind those doors, and moreover, the suspicion that he carries in his balls about what he might find. He is not afraid. No, Milo is never afraid. At most he is unsettled, at worst he is eager to pee.

Unfazed, he cricks his neck one way and then the other. His thick bones shift comfortably into place. He heads to the first door.

Each door is perforated by a small metal window, no bigger than a letter-box slot, covered by a tiny door. He could open it to look inside, but decides to just go for it. Stake in hand, he takes the handle by force and rips it open. Inside there is darkness, and a drawer. Light barely creeps into the crevice left behind. Nothing happens. Milo lays his heft upon the drawer within and opens it. Lying, open-eyed upon the metal before him is a body. He knows a vampire when he sees one. The eyes of the creature are upon him. They are blue. They are pleading. They are starved. The vampire does not move. It cannot.

Milo's stony face cracks a little. One small corner of his bottom lip twitches into a smile for barely a second before it is gone. The vampire sees it. Then Milo shuts the drawer.

"One down," he growls beneath his breath. He wipes his nose upon his sleeve. The scent of the place is cloying. It stabs at the back of his nose, behind his eyes. It tickles his throat like lye. He recalls the notes upon his hand and turns his palm up to face him. There, in scrawled biro, he reads the number: '436'. He spits on his palm, half of the number is obscured by the blood of some grey-suited man he slaughtered on the way down, and wipes. "4362" he reads.

Grabbing the low hanging light from the ceiling, he angles it at the drawer he has closed, and sees a small chalk mark upon a painted swipe of black-board paint. An elegantly scribed '3' smiles back at him. He growls and begins the long walk down the corridor.

Counting off the wall marks as he goes he is on the second floor down, halfway between 2130 and 2140, when endless trial of doors is interrupted by a wall of ancient switches, dials and levers. He opens the furthest panel and bluntly types in the number he had been given, as instructed, into the old plastic keyboard. A small diode blinks red. Steam spits from a pip above. It's so low tech it hurts. He wouldn't have been surprised to find out that half of this place was powered by horse. Behind the wall something clunks, like old heating pipes in the night. The distance noise travels away from him. The floor rumbles under his heals. Then there is a scream. It comes up from somewhere far below and yet it is so loud it pops within his inner ear like a pin jammed into an over-inflated balloon. He has never heard anything like it but he knows what it means.

The sound continues, like an unstoppable force ricocheting off the claustrophobic walls. There is a terrific banging, a horrific, raw shouting. It is the sound of wild animal, trapped. He knows what that's like. That's how he feels every day he wakes to find himself locked up inside a half-usless human form. The small hairs upon the back of his neck elevate as he thinks of what he will find at the end of it. He follows the din. Stomping straight down into the lowest floor, once he finds himself with his feet in an inch of cold water the noise has ceased. There is an eerie nothingness down here. He must be at least fifty feet below. He fumbles across the wall for the light switch, and flips it. It sparks and sputters in the wet atmosphere. One by one, with some failures in between, the ceiling lamps blink into life. In the low light Milo sees that most of the doors down here are ajar. The little hotels await occupants; sleeping uglies. Milo steps forth from the stairs onto the sodden floor. The lights flicker. Soon he reaches, 4100. Soon after, 4200. Finally, 4300. His steps slow down now as he squints at the wall marks and grunts out-loud to pierce the silence, "30, 40, 50, 55, 60, 61 … 62". There it is: 4362. This time he cranks open the little window. He peers into the darkness inside.

Something moves across his field of vision. A dark thing in a dark space blinks at him darkly. It looks back. It smiles. He doesn't know what kind of vampire awaits him on the other side of the door. He hasn't been told what, who, he has been sent to get. Just where, how, a number. He used to work for the worst of them. Milo is not used to feeling nervous, perhaps, he admits to himself, it is exciting to feel something so strange.

He steps back to prepare. No stake allowed this time. He tucks it in the back of his army trousers. He can't kill this one. He only has the blood in his veins to defend himself. His instructions are to revive and extract vampire 4362 from the vault. That's it. Do it clean. Keep it simple. In and out. Should be easy. Just another vampire. Just another day. Do it Milo, just do it. He hears Snow in his head. When ever he needs to find that brave corner of his soul it's that calm, condescending, cruel sound that settles his heart. It brings out the beast in his human form.

Milo opens the door.

Barely a breath passes before she is on him. She springs out of the darkness like a powerful snake, wraps herself about him and pins him to the damp floor with a splash. He fights back. He kicks at the weakened creature. She lands against the wall, cracks her head on the metal but it barely slows her. She's up immediately. So is he. Her features are distorted by hunger. Her eyes dark, teeth bared. What could be beauty is twisted into something animal, something hungry, something vile.

"How long?" she snarls. Her voice is raw, scratched dry. Like a fifty-a-day smoker. "How long!" she demands, grasping the wall. Her legs shudder beneath her. Milo does not answer. Her rage boils over at his silence. She is on him again. If this is her when she is weak, he can imagine she is formidable with blood in her. That must be why they chose her. They fight fiercely, knocking the lights. The bulbs pop and break, forcing the pair to duel in darkness. Eventually she betters him. That hasn't happened in a long time. She slams him, chest first, against the wall. His head pressed against metal like it is a walnut to be cracked against a table-top. She twists his arm behind his back, forces his legs from under him so that he lands on his knees with a pain that shoots up his hips and into his back teeth. He can feel the weight of her pushing against him. Her cheek rests against his ear. She is about to bite down. Doesn't she know what a bad idea it is? Is she mad, or just naïve? He tries to throw her off, but not because he is afraid for himself. They need her in one piece, apparently.

"Wolf blood," he tells her, "I don't recommend it."

"Babes, do I really look like I care?" she croaks. He can hear her hunger as loud as a heartbeat.

But she does not bite. Something has distracted her hunger. She holds him tight still but rests her ear on his shoulder, almost lovingly. It is cold, damp, and strangely delicate. To his surprise she begins to hum. In the darkness, her aching larynx opens. She begins to sing, though her voice barely reaches above a whisper.

"_They say our love won't pay the rent, _

_Before it's earned, our money's all been spent"_

Her tone rings with soft laughter. "There, there, calm yourself Miss Weaver. I'll look after you. We'll get through this. I'll get us both through this." She laughs again.

Milo realises then that this particular vampire probably lost its mind a long time before he arrived. Controlling it was going to be more difficult than he had expected. He just hoped the lawyer had a plan.


	2. Wish you were here xoxo

**Chapter 2: "Wish you were here"**

Tom is standing by the door again with a bucket and the lid from a saucepan. Alex is at his side with a toothbrush that has a long, misjudged squirt of minty-goodness upon it. As they both stare at the letter-box the toothpaste plops, unceremoniously, onto the floor.

"Seriously?" She says, "You're on this … Again?"

"I reckon it's due, like," Tom says.

"You said that yesterday. You do know it's sooo stereotypical right?" Alex's eyebrows raise into that perfect sarcastic sweep, they are sharp enough to hang coats off.

Tom looks up, "Stereo-what?"

"You… Waiting for the postman…. 'Cause you're a dog…" She looks at him like he's an idiot, "Geddit?"

Tom's features fold in disdain. "…I ain't a dog Alex."

Alex bobs her head from side to side, and shrugs, "Whatever. Look I don't know why you dinnae jus' go out and ask him for the post if ye so worried about it."

"I'm not having a repeat of last month."

Alex chooses not to ask about what happened last month, but she can imagine. She starts to try to brush her teeth.

Tom snatches the toothbrush from her hand and puts it in his mouth, "You're a ghost. You don't get halitosis," he reminded her. No matter how much time passed there was always something that she did which reminded him that she wasn't yet comfortable.

Alex threw up her arms in a huff and popped away muttering something about 'bugging his highness'.

Tom checked his watch. He's going to be late for the caf' again. It's not long after Alex has left that he hears the tentative steps of the postman approach, they slow as they near the door. There is no love lost between the two of them these days.

It was after the first 'incident' Tom began waiting at the front of the path, every morning, rain or shine, in order to get hold of the post before it crossed the threshold of Hololulu Heights it wasn't long before Tom had got to know the postman: his name was Robert, he had two children, he was always friendly, nice like. Unfortunately, after the first month he seemed to find Tom's presence a little unnerving, though it came down to Alex to point it out. 'Ye realise ye, like, totally freaking the guy out?' she pressed, with as much care as she could manage. It was one morning after the postman had made a hasty exit, she had patted Tom on the shoulder, 'he'll think ye've a crush or something.' So Tom retreated. After her advice he decided to await the delivery from behind the door. As the postman appeared Tom would open the door and, with his best and most practiced innocent smile he would say in as clear and unthreatening voice as he could muster: 'Hello Robert, how are you today? Is that the post? Isn't that lovely. Nice day isn't it. Thank you very much Robert, see you tomorrow.' He would take the post and shuffle it, looking for the offending article intently before allowing Robert to be on his merry, shutting the door behind them and carrying on with his day. It took a few of these interludes before Alex pointed out that Tom's most clear and unthreatening voice was something sinister and slightly terrifying, though the words she used were 'feckin' creepy mate'. Then last month happened, when Tom had practically tackled the man coming up the path. He could smell the offending article in the post bag, it hadn't been long since his last transformation. Robert had to fight him off with a potted geranium. After that Alex had, briefly, persuaded Tom out of the mission. They had bigger problems to deal with, and by big, Tom meant Hal.

The shadow appears at the window now. The post is unceremoniously shoved through it before the poor man is off, running away from the creaky old B&B with his little red trolly squeaking behind him.

Tom catches the contents in a bucket with a snap. Landing the lid on top of it with a cheer.

He sniffs. He can't smell it. Lifting the corner of the bucket to his nose he cracks open the lid a millimetre, and then he gets it. The scent is unmistakable, and the last thing Hal should get wind of. Blood. Dry, old, sweet.

Tom runs out the back of the house and opens the kitchen door. He empties the contents into the metal drum and throws a squirt of firelighter into it. The follows it with a lit match and watches the contents burn. He doesn't care what else was in the pile. The post they receive is mostly irrelevant: bills, they can send another copy; spam, he is sure there will be more; stuff for old tenants, for George, for Nina, even Mitchell. He had stopped reading those a long time ago, it hurt too much to think that the world hadn't even noticed they're deaths, even now. He rarely even bothered with the post since he had taken residence at the B&B, even before the 'incident'. If he hadn't caught the scent on the mat the first time, goodness knows what would have become of Hal's detox! It had been tough. More than tough, draining, impossible, horrific, but if Hal had found out about the postcards Tom knew that they would never have a hope of success. If there was one thing that had kept them going through it all, it was hope.

Tom looks at the offending article as it curls up in the flames. It's a postcard, as he suspected, like all the rest. Something so inoffensive at first glance. He once wished someone would care enough to send him a postcard, like the ones he saw outside souvineir shops on the Barry strip: pictures of families playing in the sand, of couples hand in hand on the beach, funny cartoons; anything. But there was nothing to look forward to in the arrival of each of these little travel favours, and that wasn't just because they weren't meant for him.

_'Harry,_

_Honolulu Heights,_

_Barry Island,_

_Wales'_ the address reads.

The handwriting is always the same, it is elegant, practiced, female. Beside the address there is always a great, red-brown kiss. It smiles up at him. He can't count how many of those ghostly lips he has had to look at, how many he has seen burn. Each one seems to look a little more like it is smiling, the kisser seems pleased with itself. As the flames catch in the centre of the card , splitting the bloody kiss apart. Today's delivery almost seems like it is laughing at him.

There's only one person he can think would send such ghoulish valentines. Each card is such a hideous tease, a little up-yours to Tom and Alex after how they treated her; a little 'look what you're missing' to Hal. They started arriving just after they lost her...Belinda Weaver, their friend's last folly.

'Wish you were here. Xoxo,' the Poster has written underneath.

"It can only be her, can't it?" says Alex, suddenly serious, as she appears at Tom's side.

Tom shrugs. The radio upstairs suddenly begins to play the Today show.

"Hal can't know, Alex. I'll do whatever it takes," Tom says, as the flames die down. Looking up he sees Hal look out of the window curiously.

Tom tries to act normal. He waves, and taps an imaginary watch on his wrist. "Late", he mouths.

Inside, as he gets his coat to leave he hears Hal yell down the stairs, "Alex, what in the name of all that is holy have you done with my toothbrush!"

All's well, Tom smiles, job done.


	3. Stuart

**Chapter 3: Stuart**

The house is huge. It is like a dream. The little boy keeps running. Up and down the stairs he goes, rolling on dusty carpets, hiding in creaky cupboards. His little feet patter on the stone work in rubber shoes. His small voice bounces around the tapestries, rolls along the carpet, and nudges the ancient skirting boards. When he reaches the top of the house, the old servants' quarters, he knocks on all the doors, throws them wide open and runs through all of the rooms, "Coming! Ready or not!" He pulls bed sheets away. Dances through dripping marble bathrooms with rusting taps, cranks open the secret door to the secret servants' staircase that winds around the back of the house like a snake, and is soon in the kitchen again.

He can hear the grown ups. It is Christmas, 1995, and this-is-the-best-day-ever!

His mommy says that Lady Weaver is a hoarder but he doesn't know what that means except that there's loads of cool stuff to play with. Pictures and games and toys and books and stuff to make forts out of! Oh my!

In one room there's an old white birdcage at the back. He can't get to it because of the mountain of boxes and bits in the way. Inside the cage there is an old, dead bird. It's half skeleton, half feathers, and he wants it. He wants it more than he wants anything Father Christmas might bring. He wants to show his own mommy what cool stuff he's found, how brave and clever he has been to rescue it, and that he isn't afraid. Maybe little Linny would like to see it too? He decides to scare her with it when he finds her!

Deciding to temporarily suspend the seeking part of this (their fifth) game of hide and seek, in order to retrieve the bird, he is suddenly running back up the staircase again. His parents look on from their dinner in the kitchen with a shake of the head, "I really don't know where these kids get their energy…" he hears his mommy mutter before they are once again too far away for him to care.

Opening the third door on the left on the third floor of Highcastle house, the boy looks at the odyssey before him. To the left there is a mountain of old suitcases, some have collapsed in on themselves. He can see clothes within, old floral dresses and crusty fur coats, they burst from dried and cracking plastic bags inside. Mount Suitcase reaches the ceiling mid way through the room. He thinks there's a bed underneath, holding up the construction. He can see pillars protruding from the mound. The twisted wooden struts reach upward to a canopy of old green draped fabric, a four poster forest wrapped around a mountain of old fashions. To the right, piled up on two large red Chesterfield armchairs, which flap their red ears at him like Indian elephants, is a colossal staircase of books. He clambers over a box of fireplace ornaments to read the titles, scaling at least three feet off the floor, clasping onto the outstretched arm of a carious mannequin figure, sans-head. "Thank you maam," he nods to the naked creature and steps, with a squeak of his jelly-boots, onto the first step of Literary staircase. The weight of his small bones hardly impresses upon the paper and card, but he can feel the soft leather sat of the chair settle a little. His heart pounds a second as he gains purchase. He holds his arms out to balance his weight and then carefully ascends the Encyclopedia Britannica, a collection of gardening annuals, The American Civil War: in 15 concise volumes, and six boxes of the Beano. The under-stair foundation seems to be made predominantly out of board games.

Once ascended he descends into the centre of the room with a slide down three boxes of penguin classics. His undercarriage finds them softened from reading.

He comes to rest in a valley between Mount Suitcase and the Chesterfield Book Stair. The floor of the valley is at least as far from the floor as he is tall, it is soft and comforting. When he tries to stand he finds it difficult to get steady on his feet. Every time he gains his balance he falls and sinks into the valley floor. It isn't immediately recognisable what he has found himself stuck in until one slip lands him knee deep in the clutter. Walls of old newspapers fall in about him. They feel soft and damp underfoot. He reaches out to try and gain a hand hold onto something firm enough to pull him out from the subsuming newsprint but the more eh struggles the more the cluster of papers around him seem to pile in. Mount Suitcase makes a hideous creak and seems to lean in towards him. The Book-stair begins to crumble, avalanching a few heavy Photography anthologies into the sea of paper which sucks him in. His heart thumps like crazy now. He is amount to call out for his mommy when a hand reaches towards him from further into the maze. It is small and perfect, like the hand of one of the china dolls he has seen on the top shelf in the sixth bedroom, the fourth floor. He holds onto it and is soon free of the mire. Little Linny Weaver smiles at him, "Weren't you meant to be looking for me?"

Stuart blushes, "I was, but I wanted the bird."

Linny laughs, "Mummy found me, she sent me to bring you down for dinner. That bird?" she asked and pointed to the prize where it had been balanced upon a filing cabinet out of which the drawers yawned open, spilling a waterfall of files and papers onto the cupboard beside it.

"Yeah," he says.

"Okay, hold on," and she's gone, clambering over the boxes and books and clothes and files and papers, instruments, games, broken lampshades, collapsing boxes and bags towards the present. She is nimble, like a bird herself, flying over the collection with speed. Now she is off up the cabinet like a mountaineer. Her hands are on the birdcage before Stuart has found safe haven in the arms of the Chesterfield elephant. She makes her return journey around via the back of the room, disappearing momentarily causing Stuart to strain himself out of safety to see where she has gone. Suddenly he hears her voice from the other side of the room. "Over here!" she cries out, popping her head up by the door, "There's a tunnel down under the armchairs. But it's full of snakes!"

There's a dual cry from downstairs:

"Stuart Algernon Leftbridge!"

"Belinda Veronica Weaver! Get your bottom downstairs immediately!"

It is their respective fathers. The game is soon over. The room no longer a land to travel across to save a fair maiden, full of perils and dangers and adventure. It's just a cluttered bed room. Stuart hops down onto the floor, and with no trouble at all he is by his friend. She puts the birdcage on the floor. "We can have an adventure after dinner," she insists and kisses him on his cheek. He's a year older than her, a whole eight to her seven, but when she does that he feels like a grown up. He's going to marry her one day, his Father says, that's the plan anyway. He didn't really get what that meant, but she was nice enough, he thought, as long as he had someone to play with he didn't really mind.

"Hide & Seek?" Stuart asks.

"Yeah," the girl agrees. She takes his hand, "but you'll never find me. I'm actually the best at hiding there has been...like, ever."

"Okay, well I'll just have to be the best at finding things...like, ever," he laughs and sticks out his tongue as they go to dinner.

* * *

A light heads towards Milo in the dark, it shines brightly upon him and the crazed vampire he had recently set free.

"Need some assistance?" the voice behind the light asks.

The torchbearer reaches up and tightens the bulb in the knocked lamp. It flickers alive. The lawyer smiles. He is a young man, not conventionally handsome, small, dark-haired, and quiet to the point of gentility. Very little about him betrays the ruthless intellect that Milo has come to know since Croatia, when the lawyer arrived to pull Milo out of his funk with the promise of power, money, a soupcon of world domination. It was months before Milo learned even his real name. Up until a month before he was still calling him 'Kobayashi', the amusing nickname he claimed his friends at work gave him. Though, as he learned more about his friend, he began to doubt every story he had ever been told. He wonders constantly if what he has been fed is true. Perhaps he isn't even a lawyer. Perhaps he isn't even called Stuart. It's hardly a name that suits him after all...People like him don't have names like 'Stuart', not really.

Even now, in this cold pit, there is so little about him that shows his friend's soul. Milo can smell no fear upon him, no excitement, nothing but the blood of others they have killed. Even vampires have something to them in circumstances such as these, but not this man. His face is still. Sometimes Milo wonders if the lawyer had been carved from stone. One thing Milo knows for certain: he will _never_ play 'Kobyashi' at poker.

Like Milo, the laywer too is covered in blood. His expensive clothes, a smart, grey suit, is askew from the fight. He has a knife in his hand. It is dripping with the viscous leftovers of the colleague whom he had recently bisected.

Milo is about to explain that the vampire is a filling short of a sandwich when she drops him on the floor and stares hungrily at the human before them. Milo expected her to pounce immediately. She is hesitating, but Milo knows this isn't going to end well, not for the lawyer at least. At least his friend's death will distract the vampire enough for Milo to neutralize her. No matter how much dead blood the lawyer is doused with, a starved vampire and a living human in one place are not a wise mix.

"You shouldn't have come down here," he tells his friend.

"And leave you to be Drac-u-chow; that'd be hardly very nice of me would it, not to mention that it would kind fuck-up the plan," he says before his attention shifts to the vampire between them."Hi hunny," he says, "hungry?"

"Stuart, what the hell are you doing!" Milo interrupts, but before he can learn more the lawyer has taken the knife in his hand and has plunged it into his forearm.

The lawyer smiles, and suddenly Milo sees something in him he hasn't seen before: pride. "Found you," Stuart says, "I win."

The vampire doesn't care. She lunges towards the human.


	4. Plan B

**Chapter 4: Plan B**

"Denial isnae just a river in Egypt," Alex mutters to herself flipping through daytime television without even making a move. Learning to control electrical appliances through will alone was a definite death-perk. There weren't many, but not having to fight over the remote control is a winner.

There had been days when Alex forgot what had happened to her. She would go through the house, opening doors, wondering where her brothers were, or get up to change the channel. She'd even wander into the shower in the morning before remembering there was no point. Once or twice she stood there getting 'wet' before she realised she wasn't even warm from the scolding water, that the clothes she'd taken off didn't really exist to remove, that the water that fell upon her face was an illusion; the 'life' she had now, equally so. The dead mind played horrible tricks sometimes. "Existentialism can get-te-fuck," she'd say to herself to remind herself not to freak out.

Then there are the days she wishs she was proper dead and not stuck somewhere in between, like a fart in a small room that no one can smell. There had been more of those days lately. A lot more.

Admittedly the moment that it had hit home today was that second: during the advert breaks for the third Jeremy Kyle US episode she was forced to watch, in the absence of anything else engaging. She never thought that freedom from watching Hal's endless antiques programs would be so disappointing. Still, she wasn't going to buckle. David Dickinson would be a last resort only. She would rather haunt the urinals of hell until Armageddon than watch Dickinson oil himself through yet another tragic car-boot sale.

"Hell cannae be worse than this, eh Jez?" she asks the emptiness. The Universe responds with an ad break in which she is actively encouraged to by life-insurance. "Funny, big-man, Funny."

She flips her head to where the breakfast table was and pouts. Until recently she had been able to endure Hal's company in moments like this. Then they moved to Plan B.

Alex doesn't like Plan B. Plan B is, in many ways, harder than Plan A. Sure, Plan A involved a lot more mess, yelling, unpleasant personal hygiene, awkward conversations and some visions she would rather forget. Sure, Hal is probably a lot more comfortable not being strapped to a chair 24 hours a day, but Alex is inexcusably bored. It's no contest. Plan A was a vast improvement on Plan B.

She wouldn't mind if she could go anywhere, but on days like these, when Tom had to work, Alex has to stay in the house in case Hal's worst inclinations means he makes a break for it. She is under strict instructions to "rent-a-ghost his ancient undead arse back to the B&B eh?" and she had promised.

"Ungggh" she groans, the telly blinks off. She bangs the back of her head against the sofa a few times. She needed to wind up Hal, even though he doesn't rise to it like he used to, something had changed recently, not just his geographical location. The joke with the toothbrush had barely even paid off. She was surprised how disappointed she was about it. At least a fight would have broken the monotony.

Tragically something else had broken instead.

She felt as if she was drifting sometimes, as if the glue between Tom and Hal was the only thing sticking her to the earth, and that the glue was stretching, dry and cracking away. Tom and Hal barely spoke any more. Tom had thrown himself into this pointless bromance with the postman, and Hal, well, Hal had his own obsessions to deal with. He had insisted on riding out the remainder of his rehabilitation alone. "For everyone's sake," he had said, though Alex thought he was just tired of fighting it any more. So was Tom, and so they had locked Hal away. Alex was waiting for Tom to realise that this was a sign they had both given up.

Perhaps she was as bad as them both. She knew she had been giving Hal too hard a time these days, but that was her obsession, her way of coping. Perhaps she kept her antagonism going hoping he would fight back somehow, that there was something of the old Hal in there to defend himself. Perhaps he had become immune to it. Was it wrong of her to be angry that even that failed to hold her attention any more? She didn't get it. Plan B was meant to be a step forward, a way for Hal to start normalising, he had insisted, but Alex thinks he seems to have gone backward. Something of the man whose awkward guilt she had enjoyed mocking had got lost in the process. She was always surprised by how much she missed that guy.

In a moment she is upstairs, standing by his door. She hadn't even intended it. Death-perk.

Tom had nailed the door shut, at Hal's request. The window too. He hadn't broken the glass yet, but had threatened it once or twice. So she hadn't had to keep her promise, _yet_.

"Hal?" she asks the wood. No response. "I got ye a new toothbrush," she lied. "Can I come in?" still nothing. "Look, I'm sorry but ye did like drink my blood an' …" The accusation fell flat these days, like an old joke told by an aged comedian to an empty hall, 'take my wife… no, seriously, take my wife'.

"Seriously, look, I'm bored. I'll play Scrabble. Christ, Trivial Persuit! Or we can even try Risk again; but you're _no_ playin' Germany, not after the history lecture last time, you're France and you'll have to deal with that!" Nothing. "Look, so I'm just coming in. Don't be naked or anything, that's just, well, I warned ye so it would just be creepy if you hadn'e pants on, or... something. I'll count te five okay? One, Two, and another thing, make a space, ye've no excuse. Still a clear spot by the window right?" she asked, aiming for the corner by the window in her mind, which was 'clear' that morning when she had nicked his toothbrush, "three, four…"

Alex surveys the room before her.

There isn't much space to move in Hal's room these days. It started about a week into the move upstairs. First there was just the table, the large circle of little ivory pieces that Hal built the first day, then took down. He explained it to her then, how it helped him cope, how his old friends had come up with the idea. It seemed sensible at first.

The growth happened by degrees. The next day when Alex visited the circle had extended down onto a chair. She just thought he hadn't been using all the pieces. The next day there were dominoes on the floor too. It was like a horrible white mould creeping out from the table by the window. At first it took him only a morning to construct and deconstruct the circles. The rest of the time Hal was difficult to handle. They had to completely leave him to his own devices for two days. Tom and Alex sat outside his room. One at his door, one in the garden to make sure he didn't harm himself, or get out and harm anyone else. Then everything went quiet. She's certain it was because Tom buckled as the next time Alex rent-a-ghosted into Hal's room there were three more boxes of dominoes. Enough to keep him occupied most of the day. The circles of ivory spread all half way across the room. Since then, apart from moments when Alex wound him up enough to get a response, Hal barely spoke. He fixated on the construction and deconstruction of domino circles which stretched from wall to wall, over almost ever surface, and under every unit. The only clear space was the bed, upon which their friend lay, and between it and the sink. His room was a little ivory mine-field. She isn't sure what would happen if she knocked them over.

"Hey," Alex says, "How's Rainman doin' today'eh?"

"Leave me alone," says Hal after a while, rolling himself away from her eyeline and curling up on the bed.

"Aye, well I wish I could do that, but ye did -"

"Drink your blood," Hal interrupts flatly. "I recall."

"Yeah." Alex arrives on the bed at his feet and bounces up and down on the hard mattress. She sits there in silence for a time until Hal pulls the sheet out from under her and yanks it over his head. The empty domino boxes that are stacked neatly at the end of the bed fall in on each other. There must be thirty of them, "Keeping yourself busy then." Alex says, Tom must've been sneaking him a box a day, she supposes. A thought dances across her mind. She wonders for a second how he's doing it, they had only prised the door open once and that was a while ago. But before the thought gained traction Hal had thrown off the covers and was looking her in the eye.

"Why are you still here Alex?" he says with an accusatorial tone, "you should have moved on by now."

"Well, s'cuuuuuuse me for caring."

"You don't _care_, Alex, this isn't caring. If you cared you'd leave me be."

"So you could rot yourself away in this room, break Tom's poor heart or worse go off and murder the world, as you keep _insisting_ you're capable of doing! No ta, I'll stay put. Y've no hope o' that hun."

Hal laughs, it's something that puts Alex off her stride a little. She missed that sound. He's genuinely amused. His smile cracks from ear to ear. His dark eyes fold in happy amusement.

"I'm sorry, I wasn'e trying to be funny."

Hal calmed, "Hope," he says, "it's a joke."

"And the punchline?" Alex presses, assuming he has a point.

"It doesn't exist," Hal explains.

"Emo-much? Christ, it was just a tooth brush ne need to get all 'what's the point' on my ass Howard Hughes."

The clock on the mantel reached 8.00 am and the conversation was done. Hal pushed the covers back and took a clean shirt from the bedside drawer with care. Slipping it over his thinning frame he began work, catching Alex's eye only briefly to get her to move so that he could grab hold of one of the boxes. Then he began as he did every day, taking the nearest domino from beside the bedside clock and placing it carefully in the box. She wouldn't hear another word out of him all day now. Sometimes she would sit and watch him for hours. Not today. Today she couldn't cope.

She was back in her own room before the clock hit 8.02. She felt like crying or screaming but nothing came out, instead she took a little box from under the bed and unlocked it. Inside she kept all the clues she had been able to gather about the men that took her body, and underneath that, sealed in an old sandwich bag, there was a postcard. On one side it had a picture of a sunset over a hillside. On the other a bloody smeared kiss. Tom wasn't the only one who was worrying about the messages, but she hadn't felt able to destroy it. When Tom saw the postcards arrive he saw only the threat they held. Alex saw something else, she saw that hope her friend insisted did not exist. The cards were a mystery, something for him to solve, perhaps the only thing that would save him from himself. The hope of finding her own corpse kept her going, it was real enough to pretend it was her a reason to stay. She saw something in those little messages which would give Hal the same feeling at least. False hope was still hope.

She stares at the card for a while. She thinks of Tom, of all the effort he had put in to keeping the messages from his friend, and of all the good it had done them both. She thinks of that feeling she has that something was broken, and of Hal wasting his mind away behind a closed door. Then she is by his door again, and without the need for a second thought she slips the card out from the bag and slides it under the wood.

It knocks one of the dominoes, she can hear them begin to fall.


	5. Make a habit of two things

**Okay, go on, one more, but only cause I like you.**

* * *

**Chapter 5 – Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least do no harm**

Alex had to stand back from the door as the rapid little tick-tacks of ivory on ivory filled the space beyond the door with sound.

"No! No!" Hal called out, his voice loud but barely audible over the din, as his carefully constructed world began to fall. "No! How dare you! Do you know what you've done! You stupid, stupid, bitch!" She heard him run over to the door and immediately back paced to hug the wall. He landed against it with a weight heavier than she thought he had to him any more. He began pounding on the door.

"Alex! Was that you?! Alex! Alex! Come in here! Al -"

Then he stopped.

She saw the edge of the card she had delivered disappear from the shadow between his feet. She heard him turn over the card, just the once. She thought of the bloody smear on the card, the image of him face-first in her own maggoty dead blood played over her imaginary synapses, and suddenly the silent contemplation that she could feel him undertake made her dead stomach churn. The shadow cast by his feet suddenly disappeared, there was the sound of stumbling and then there was a clatter, the sound of a skinny set of bones landing in a pile of tiles. There was nothing for a moment. Should she explain? Could she? Wasn't it just better to leave him to muse it over. What was gluing her to the spot; fear, shame? A little of both?

"No?" he said, quieter than before, questioning whatever it was before him, "But it can't be…she said she'd gone…"

He hadn't run. Not yet. Did she expect him to make a break for it? Alex paced about. He could clearly hear her. He was back at the door again, but something was different. He didn't run, he paced up, gently, there was control in his footsteps.

"Alex, where did you get this? Alex? Did you put this here. Alex?" His voice had softened. The way he kept saying her name was quiet, unnervingly so. There wasn't anything in his tone to suggest he was being friendly, except by intent that he would seem so. Had she made the worst judgement call in all of history? Had she undone all they had worked for? Tom had feared it. She was only trying to help. Was she just a naïve little girl after all?

She didn't know what to say. True, not like her, but what could she say?

"Alex? You need to tell me where this came from. Who sent this? You can tell me." Alex opened her mouth and then nothing came out, she didn't know. How _could_ she answer? She pulled a face instead, it was only a shame no one could appreciate it.

"I know you're there," Hal said.

"Seriously! Dude can vampires actually _hear_ sarcasm now?"

"Alex, it's very important you tell me where this came from. You clearly think it's important I have it. You know what this means, don't you?"

"Errrm no, that's sort of why I gave it to ye. 'Cause you're such genius 'n all."

"Did anyone ever tell you irony doesn't actually become you?"

"Yes, you… _repeatedly_."

Silence now.

Unerving, gut churning silence.

"How long have you had this Alex?" It's like he's standing right next to her.

"Like, a while," she says flippantly.

"A day, a week, two weeks, longer? It's important."

"That one…a few weeks, but it's no' the only one."

"How many?"

"A few."

"How many, Alex?"

"Dunno, like a dozen, one came this morning like."

"Was that what you and Tom were burning in the garden?"

"Maybes." She shrugged, for the benefit of no one inparticular.

"He knows about them too?"

"Suppose so."

"Evasiveness is a little pointless, Alex. These messages have been arriving for a while, as recent as this morning, and you and Tom have been keeping them from me, yes?"

"Fine. Yes!"

"And do you know why Tom thought it best to keep them from me?"

"'Cause he thought ye'd flip out, Hal…tell me ye've no' flipped out!"

"That's all I need to know… Thank you, Alex."

"Wait… is it from her?" There's nothing now. She sees the shadows at the foot of the door recede. She returns to it, "Seriously, Hal, is it from that bint, Belinda, 'cause you know I just thought it would be nice to know that she was well, thinking of you n' stuff, but I thought if you knew she was out there you'd like pull your shit together n'all. Hal!"

"Don't worry Alex, you were right, my _shit, _as you call it, is now well and truly together."

Something smashes. It's glass. Then there's a thud in the distance.

"Fuck," drops Alex, like a brick on the hall floor, "Fuck-bollocks-fuckpants."

Well at least it was better than Jeremy Kyle, she thinks, and maybe this would at least kybosh the uber-shiteness of Plan B.

Alex rent-a-ghosts into the garden.

No Hal. The window above is broken, sure enough, but he can't have gotten far.

"Balls. Hal! Hal, seriously, come back!"

She rent-a-ghosts to the street. No, no Hal.

She rent-a-ghosts into his room. Maybe he's still there. Maybe he's just vented a little anger, that's it, he's fine… fine…just pissed that's all, it's understandable.

"Hal?" No Hal. Under the bed: no Hal. In the cupboard: no Hal. Door still nailed shut: still, no Hal. Under the bed sheets: no fecking Hal!

"Cock," says Alex. "Cocking cock. Seriously Hal where the fuck are ye hidin' this is no' funny like?" she scratches her head, "See this is where all those episodes of Jonathan Creek should have totally paid off," she admits, and then, shoulders thrown back, decides to get Tom.


	6. According to plan

**Chapter 6 - According to plan**

Milo does his best to shake away the shock at the lawyer's interruption in order to do the best he can to save the man's life. The old army instincts kick in. Never leave a man behind. There's a fine line between being noble and being stupid, Milo thinks as the starving vampire takes more blood than he presumes the lawyer had ever intended to give. He rips the tazer from his back pocket in order to neutralise the woman, and powers off his back legs to take her down. Running forward he meets only the powerful sensation of running into a brick wall. It knocks him from his feet onto his backside, sliding him back to where he started. He regains his senses as quickly as he can and pulls himself awake he sees that what he has run into is an arm, or, more specifically, the manifestation of an arm wielding the kind of power that only the dead are able to deploy. The kind that makes him feel as if his back ribs have been broken.

Stuart smiles, he holds out a spectral hand and lifts Milo to his feet.

"No need to trouble yourself with heroics," he says. "What's done is done."

They both look on at the feasting vampire.

"Somehow I didn't imagine it to be so messy, though," Stuart says with cold amusement.

Milo is certain he sees pride in his dead friend's features. "Sorry," he says.

"Don't be," Stuart insists, "It didn't hurt."

Milo watches the woman tear into Stuart's corpse like it's a piñata full of ambrosia. Something fleshy and no longer distinct is flung in their general direction. It lands with a meaty red slap on the concrete.

"Coulda' fooled me Stu."

"It was quick. Ish."

"Want me to knock her out now, so we can get her out of this crap'ole?" Milo twizzles the tazer in his large palms. He'll enjoy taking this vampire down. He doesn't like to admit she beat him so easily.

"No, no, we can let her enjoy her meal for a moment. I'd like to think I was more meal than a service station pasty. She's going to need what she can get."

"So this was the plan?" Milo poses, unnerved by the calmness his friend is exhibiting given his sudden demise.

"I told you I had someone else in mind for our number other than that infernal psychic harpee. She has about as much spirit as month old lettuce, and half the intellect. Everything's going according to plan, so, no need to be sorry."

"I wish you'd have mentioned…"

"Why?" Stuart's ghost looks at Milo with the confusion, he blinks two large blue eyes, Milo is sure they weren't that blue before. "I'm not sure what purpose it would have served. Would you have tried to have stopped me?"

"No."

"There we go then. It was necessary. Besides, how else do you suppose we're going to get her out of here?" He pokes Milo in the shoulder, "Hmm?" He is still softly spoken, almost effeminate in his oldly terrifying manner.

"I assumed," Milo guesses, "we'd walk her out the way we came in."

Stuart's ghost laughs, "I don't presume Milo. It's a dangerous thing to leave anything to chance. We can't walk her out. It's simply not going to be possible."

"But everyone's dead."

"That rather depends on your definition, old chap, nevertheless it's not the dead we need to worry about."

Milo scratched his head, "You're saying you needed to die in order to get us out of here?"

"Something like that."

"And you couldn't ask Connie?"

Stuart looks at Milo like he's a first class idiot just embarked from the special bus, "Firstly, Milo, ghosts can't get into the Collection, otherwise we would have tried that already, wouldn't we? Besides, she's otherwise employed." He waves the idea away flippantly, as if Milo had suggested that the best way to escape the tunnels was by enacting a musical number.

"So, why then?"

"Because of the fail-safe."

"Fail-safe?" The pipes overhead groan and clunk. They shudder in the ceiling brackets.

"The Collector isn't an idiot Milo. He's been building up this little haul for hundreds of years, do you think it hasn't been penetrated before. If ghosts can't get in, it stands to reason there are ways to stop anything getting out too."

"They're all sleeping, or drugged, and locked away."

"And yet here we stand, and there's Belinda, there have been escape attempts before. Rescue attempts and the like. By report none of them have succeeded yet. Unlocking one door," he points to where the vampire had been held, "locks down the central system, no way in or out for anything corporeal, and it sets off the timer on the fail-safe, only the Collector can shut it down. I don't see him around do you."

"So what's the plan?" Milo spits with exasperation.

"Oh, it'll all be fine, I think I have the system beaten this time."

"_This _time? How many attempts have you made?"

The lawyer smiles and pats Milo on his wide shoulder. He seems consumed with such incredible glee that for a second Milo thinks he is glowing. There is a horrible insipid blueness to his eyes. It is cold, haunting and seems to burst with the kind of controlled power Milo has never seen before. It turns Milo's stomach. He's seen a lot of things in his time; he's seen a lot of ghosts, met a lot of vampires, even a zombie or two, but he had never been so unnerved by such happiness. The lights fizz and pop but Milo can still see clearly. The lawyer is giving off his own light now. There is another shudder in the ceiling.

"You'll be fine," the lawyer assures the wolf. "There's a way out for you. It'll be here in a minute. Someone will come and get you shortly and we can crack on."

Milo doesn't believe him.

At first he feels it. It there is a terrible draught that catches his ankles, all the air above it being pushed downwards at speed. Then he hears an incredible rush above him, as if the winds of hell had been unleashed. Finally he feels the heat. Milo looks at the cavern from which the vampire crawled, in a pinch could he hide in there?

Suddenly they both notice a door. It's as if it has always been there though it looks so out of place in the horrific depths of this place. It is white, expensive looking, with a large brass knocker shaped like the head of a cherub. Stuart ignores it. "There we go, Milo, you can hardly say I'm not a generous man."

"I'm not going through th…"

Suddenly all that air is gone, sucked away. Milo grasps at his throat as it leaves, as the empty darkness scolds his larynx which closes in on itself. It finishes his sentence for him. He knows what the fail-safe is now: Fire, and lots of it, something to scare the collection back into its cages, and destroy all those who had no home in these halls. He tries to call out for the lawyer to help him. He can hear it, feel it, coming for him.

"Sorry, Milo, I know the rules, living things don't travel well this way." He lays his hand on the vampire, she looks up at him, bloody. He looks at her with something as close to love as Milo has ever seen. "Someone will come get you, I promise, it's perfectly safe." The lawyer salutes, and with that they are both gone.

Milo, alone, eyes up the two options left to him by this superior little fucktard and tries to swear. If he dies he will haunt that bastard till he'd choose hell over another day in Milo's company.

He has heard stories of what lies beyond the door, but can't be sure what will happen to him if he takes that route? Supernatural species or not he isn't sure if the living can survive a journey into purgatory? Then there's the cage the vampire came from, it's hardly a pleasant prospect. Would he be trapped? Would he just starve to death in there, or worse? He doesn't know what to choose, but in a split second he has made his decision. As a wall of fire engulfs the corridors, cindering the corpses that have been left behind Milo is nowhere to be found.


	7. What Harry Did

**Part 2: "Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them."**

* * *

** Chapter 7 : ****What Harry Did**

**Some time ago...**

Snow used to say that 'Time' was inconsequential.

The only time we talked of it, oh, so long ago, gluttony had stripped me of my watch. I had misplaced it in my hunger. He could not tell me the date or the hour when I happened to ask for it. He laughed as I searched for the lost watch and I angered at his mockery. He simply smiled, 'Time, and the care of it, is like a memory of some infantile misdemeanor', he said. 'So minor that it I am reminded of it only in the panic I see in the others. You look as I did when I was a child and I dropped my mother's eggs, but such events have no consequence. They seemed of grave importance once, perhaps, but matter nothing now. I must have experienced the fear of Time at some point, as I did the fear I would be beaten for spoiling the food but I shall be damned if I care less, and I was damned,' he laughed quietly, 'quite some time ago.'

I realise now that to me, clearly, Time is still of consequence. I still know my age and note the seasons; the years, months, weeks, days, hours, even, since I last fed. For example, barring the minor indiscretions of late, I know that fifty-five years, three months, four days, twelve hours and (give-or-take) twenty-three minutes have been the length of my abstinence.

Them came Cutler.

Then came Alex.

Then came... Peaches and cream...Belinda.

I had tried. I had really, really, tried. In the end I can say that, can't I? There are so many words I could once use to describe Miss Belinda Weaver. Infuriating, duplicitous, tall, manipulative, insane, beautiful, serene; but these days I can think of only one: delicious. Then came her father, the interloper with impossibly bad timing. He came take her back to a life I had already taken from her. He failed. How would I describe him? I cant recall his features, but the taste of spiced car-oil that had warmed in the sun is not easy to remove from my throat.

So, I again found myself trying to fathom how long it had been, when I see Connie Simm again.

I recognised her immediately, of course, perched on the edge of the sofa like a fat old pigeon. I hate mediums. I hate dead mediums more. She is not a sight I will soon forget, like a bad smell that regurgitates a repressed memory as if it had only just happened. Seeing her refreshes those flavours in my pallet again.

"'Ello lovie," she said in an horrific chirp. Her face contorts when she sees me, "Blimey if you don't look like hot hell on a short stick."

"Leave me alone," I mewled.

"Your friends 'ere?" I declined to answer, hoping, maybe hat it will go away. "That sparky Scottish lass and the simple fella?"

"Tom is not..."

"...only I shouldn't like them to know I popped by is all."

I indulged her, out of boredom mainly. It was late. Alex had gone out, inspired by a late night CSI marathon that I had been forced to endure, to 'search the scene o' the crime fe clues'. I declined to remind her it was futile as I needed some peace. Tom was 'on his monthly' as Alex had begun to call it.

"What are you here for Ms Simms?" I demanded, trying to find a comfortable position in my chair - such a thing is also futile but, like Alex, a trapped animal in a zoo must have some rituals to bring psychological reprieve.

"The Lady sent me." Suddenly she had my attention.

"Belinda? How is she? Has she... Has she fed?" what answer did I hope for?

"Oh no, no," Connie laughed, wrapping her hideous multi-coloured cardigan around her repeatedly as if to flap away amusement, "no, no, dear, not a drop."

Was that a relief? It _was _a relief. There was hope for me then still.

"Where is she? Is she well? Is she with anyone...met other vampires, I mean" I was hazy on how to find out if a woman was being courted these days. Was it appropriate to simply ask?

"Other vampires? Yes, one or two I should say. She's keeping to herself I would suppose. And no chaps on the horizon at present though I'm sure that will change. "

"Who?" I snapped, not that I could have leapt to defend her honour or fight for her hand at that present moment. She was free. I, still, was not.

"Oh I wouldn't worry myself with that sort of nonsense, my dear, I'm long since passed fretting about such things. Love is a young woman's game. I'll let the living play it. Anyway, I'm here to help."

"Help?"

"Yes dear, help. It's time you get yourself sorted and I'm sure your friends are lovely and all that but I'm informed I shall only move on, so to speak, if I fix this, this..." she waved her arms in my unsalubriously pinioned direction as if I were some hideous fashion faux pas, "...Mess."

"Respectfully, Ms Simm, this is not your doing."

"I beg to differ dear. I let this happen and I'll be damned if I'm going anywhere until something good comes of it. So, I'm going to sort it out. Seems like you're in need of a good mummying young man..."

"I am at least four hundred years older than you are," I joked.

"...best we don't let your friends know though, eh, don't reckon your friends would be happy to see me again."

"That alright, because you're not staying." She was right, Alex was not likely to forgive the medium for how she was treated and Tom had made Alex and I swear never to mention the 'B' word again given the rather violent impact it had upon my mood. Connie Simm's presence would never be deemed conducive to rehabilitation. Then again maybe I should mention it, Alex could take her.

"First thing's first," she continued without listening to my protestations, "you need a Plan B."

"Plan B?"

"Well it's clear this whole strapped up thing isn't going to work for me, and it's sure as shit not working for you, Sweetie. Let's get you upstairs, get you some privacy, and some normality and then we can start work. When you're all better I'm sure m'Lady wouldn't mind having a handsome beau like you on her arm." She laughed and winked, like an old rotten apple collapsing in on itself, "Wouldn't that be lovely?"

So that was it then, was it? Belinda was living the life, abstaining from blood, waiting for me? She had sent this harpy to help me return to health, to her? It seemed a little far fetched. Belinda hardly seemed to be the kind of person to send someone to do her dirty work, but perhaps she had changed. We all do, we are never the humans we were.

I sighed, "Fine."

I suspected then that Belinda had nothing to do with the visitation, but hope fooled me into believing it. Knowing as I do now I shan't listen to hope again. I suspect now that, for me, 'Hope' will be like 'Time' was to Snow. Something strange I see others, that will lead me only to laugh.


	8. Distrust camels

**Chapter 8: Distrust camels, and anyone else who can go a week without a drink.**

**Monday**

I know this because I persuaded, nay, begged, Tom to put on Radio 4. It must have been a long time since I heard the 'Today Show'. I'm sure it wasn't this frenetic before. Tom stopped putting the radio on because, despite the calming tones of John Humphrys and Sue McGregor righteously tearing apart politicians, I was getting quite irate over various political debacles. Even 'You and Yours' started to set me off, there was an episode about the price of milk which really got me going. Tom declared it wasn't conducive to my wellbeing, or rather he said: "To be honest I don' know why you're bovverd mate, I mean, it's all just a lot of hot air like. It's goin' off."

I asked this morning, as nicely as I could, if we could have it on again. "I can quite contain myself," I insisted, thinking of Connie Simm's advice, "It's time". Tom was reluctant at first, but he came around. They are arguing about whether some civil servant should quit over a sexual misdemeanour. It's refreshing to find that nothing has changed. I could live for a thousand years and I suspect the demoi will continue to demand for the heads of their Kings.

Perhaps if I can sustain my patience with this small thing it may be possible to succeed with something bigger? That was how it started with Leo. One step at a time. With Leo I earned a domino for every small victory, until I had the whole set. No such prizes from Tom, I shall have to hold out for the greater award.

They are discussing sport now, this may be harder than I had expected.

**Wednesday**

"I don' know Hal," Tom scratches his head, "I don't think yer ready mate."

"Alex?" I ask, hoping for some support for my case.

"I dunno, he _has_ been pretty good Tom."

"Back to normal like?" Tom looks to her with those plate-like eyes wide with expectation.

"Well it's not like I was around a lot before but if by "normal' you mean: insanely awkward, difficult te have a conversation with and full o' his own self importance then, yeah, normal…ish."

Tom pauses. He looks back at me, so happy. "Hal!" he says, "It's workin' mate!"

"You've done a wonderful job, the two of you…"

"Aye, you can tell me!"

"…but I can't hope it's over yet."

"Well, no, I mean, like…" Tom shook his head, "…nah sorry, mate, yer lost me."

"He means," Alex rolled her eyes, "It's not over yet."

"I'm ready. it'll be okay. Look at me. I'll be fine. It's fine. I just need to get back into a routine."

**Thursday**

On the Today Show today Sue McGregor is haranguing the head of the Department for Trade and Industry about corporate tax avoidance. I have my eyes closed, I am counting. It's not a good moment. Their nasal whine sounds like nails on slate and I have found myself imagining what it would be like to rip out the larynx of the DTI's head and wear it as a scarf.

With a click the radio goes mute. I open my eyes ready to snap, but manage to remain calm. It's a warmly familiar feeling to maintain such control. I find Alex and Tom opposite me, as they did when we first began this process. It's horribly like being interviewed. I recoil a little in surprise.

"I was fine. Wasn't I?" I ask wondering if my imaginations somehow betrayed me?

Neither of them is smiling, but I don't think I've done anything wrong. I feign a slow smile in response. I don't think they are sure what to say.

"Alrigh'" says Tom, finally, "We've had an 'Ahhs Meetin' like," (I presume he means house meeting,_ 'don't react, Babes, we'll get through this',_ I hear a sweet voice in my head say) "an we think we should give it a go."

"Give what a go?" I annunciate, trying to not to sound exasperated and equally unnerved.

"Whatever's next," Alex explains for him.

"Next?"

"Aye, well you've done this before, so, what's the next bit? I mean, you didnae plan te stay like this forever, righ?" She looks unsure, as if perhaps I did in some warped way.

"No! It's just," I say, but they look as if they doubt their own convictions. "I mean, no there's a next step, a Plan B." That's what Connie called it right?

"Isn't Plan B what you do when Plan A fails?"

"Is it?" I say as innocently as possible and then repeat to them, verbatim, Connie's instructions.

**Friday**

"You'd have a go at us either way!" Alex insists as I frenetically tidy my room. I have to stop to rest, my limbs ache from under-use.

Alex tries to help but a push her away. She's only there to guard the window. Tom is behind the door, he has the key. I can smell the sweat of his palm and the coppery residue that swims in it as he paws at it. Alex rentaghosted us both into my room ten minutes ago and it was only then I appreciated the full horror of the mess Belinda left behind when she ransacked my room. I hated her a little for a moment. Then I loved her for it. I needed something to focus on to stop me from throwing myself head first out of the window.

"You could have at least run the hover around," I say, obsessing comfortably over inches of dust which I feel as if I am wading through, as well as splayed books, heaped clothes, upturned tables and... "You've taken out half of the wooden furniture and anything I can use as a weapon and but not bothered to clear up the mess!"

"Do you _want_ to go back downstairs? Don' think we won't do it."

"No, of course not, but look at it!"

"Well, it'll keep ye busy won't it? Want some marigolds?"

I stop. I take an empty breath, and I nod. "Marigolds would be lovely, thank you, Alex."

**Saturday**

Today is not a good day.

"Let me out!" I rail.

On the Today Show they are talking to the person from the DTI again. Yesterday I piled all my furniture against the window and today I am taring it away like a man trapped in a mine. As soon as I move something Alex swipes it back. For a ghost she looks tired, but manages to dodge as I throw my radio at her. The door slams downstairs, Tom back from work.

"Seriously, Hal, calm down! It's okay," Alex insists. "Do you want to do this or no?"

"No. No. I can't. Seriously, stake me." I slump to the floor, head in my hands. This was different to the last time. I have something to focus on, something big, something so much greater than a pitiful lump of ivory or the trust of a friend; but at this very moment it feels like a myth. It feels as if it never happened.

Maybe I imagined it. Maybe there never was a Belinda Weaver. No Connie Simm. Maybe I hallucinated everything. It would make sense, stuff like this had happened before.

"I'm no staking you Hal," Alex explains, sitting down beside me. "You're doin' okay. Seriously."

"I'm just tired."

"Aye, well we're all tired. I don't sleep. How shit is that, that I cannae sleep. I mean sleep was like my all time favourite thing when I was alive, and now! Now! Nooooo. Maybes I sleep when I get to heaven."

I look at her in disbelief, "I thought you didn't believe in 'Heaven'."

"Aye, well, whatever's behind the magical portal or whatever it is. Maybe Heaven's like a really top-class Travelodge. With a mini-bar. I miss mini-bars."

I am about to begin a philosophical debate to pass the time when I see something in a box at the bottom of the wardrobe which sits on the chair under the rest of my furniture. There's a pair of high heal shoes in there. I can see them, I'm sure I can. I run towards the mess again to try and dig them out but Alex tries to pull me back. She must think I'm trying to make a break for it again.

"I'm fine!" I yell, pushing her away.

I think I reach them, that tangible thing that proves I am not going mad, when she hits me around the head with one of my weights.

**Sunday (I think)**

When I wake up, my head still stinging. I expect to find that my lapse had resulted in a return to the sitting room. It is a pleasant surprise to find that my friends have clearly maintained their trust in this new plan. Tom sits at the end of the bed.

"A'right mate," he says. "A's yer 'ead?"

I smile, "sore."

"This is what yer want righ'?" he asks. "Only it don't seem to be workin'. I thought you said you was better like?"

"It's not easy Tom."

"I ain't sayin' that, it's jus'…" He scratches his old wounds, a tick I have noticed he is plagued with when he can't find his words. "I want things to be the same as they were."

"Things change Tom, nothing ever stays the same."

"I know that, jus' when it was you an' me an' Annie an' the baby like it were…"

"Annie has gone Tom."

"I know that, it were jus' nice like."

"Yes, it was very nice, for a time." I try to reach out to comfort him, but my hand hesitates before I am able to rest it on his shoulder. It feels over familiar, even after everything. "Even with any impending Vampire Apolcalypse, it was nice."

"An' the caf' just ain't the same. An' Alex is - she's lovely - but she ain't… and what abaat when she finds her body, then what if you're not better." He scratches his head again, so much must have been plaguing him. I forget how young he is sometimes. He has experienced so little of this world, the world of real people, of hard choices, disappointment and loss. It's at moments like this he seems like a lost boy in a supermarket, blinded by the bright lights, harsh sounds, crowds and kerfuffle; searching for his father.

"I sadly doubt she will find what she's looking for Tom, but even if she doesn't its likely one day she too will pass over, and I hope … I hope you haven't given up on me yet. I haven't."

"Yeah, about that. After yesterday…"

"It won't happen again Tom."

"See I think it will, an' so does Alex. We've worked it out." He reaches to the floor and produces a box, from within he removes, first, a new radio, second, a hammer and a box of nails.

"Tom what on earth is that for?" I demand.

"We was talkin' an' Alex says yer need an incentive, you know, to get better properly. I couldn't think of nothin' but she said a' course I couldn't 'cause I care too much an' I don' want to 'urt yer feelings like, but she said there was this time when 'er littlest bruvver were misbe'avin' an' she took 'is favourite toy away. She said she put 'is this thing in this box and she locked the box, an' then she took that and locked that box in another box, and then again in anuvver. She said that every day that 'e behaved like that he'd give him a key. There were five days and there were five keys."

"I'm not sure where you're going with this Tom," I say. He is speaking very slowly, as if he has learned his speech by heart.

"There's 50 nails. We're gunna nail up the window so that stays shut, an' then the rest, well, we're goin' to nail the door closed, like. An' everyday that you're okay like we'll take a nail out. I reckon that's a month. I'll be fine, I'll just get on with work like an' then you'll be fine won't yer?"

I worked it out. In this scenario _Tom_ was the favourite thing. It was a thought that was in equal parts sweet and distressing that Alex thought this.

I don't answer. I don't like this idea at all. Loneliness is a bad thing for me. It never worked out well in the past. But what is the alternative? I have to decide between depriving myself from my best-friend simply to sate the vain hope that I will repair myself and see a woman again; a woman that I am no longer certain existed in the first instance; or return to Plan A, the company of friend, but the likelihood that the paths of Belinda and I might not have another opportunity to cross for a very long time. It was a choice between lust and patience. I know one boded well for the monster in me, and one for the man.

Tom doesn't seem certain about this plan either. If loneliness is bad for me I'm not sure it's any better for my friend.

"If it don't work then we'll try the other way again. Deal?" he adds.

I nod.

Monster: 1; Man: 0.

Tom continues, sad, perhaps, that I have agreed to this strange idea. He gets up, hammer in hand. "Alex can get you anythin' you need, and she'll make sure you don't loose it and jump out the winder or nowt."

He stands and heads to the wide windows, pulling up a few panels of wood he proceeds to cover up much of the window, leaving a small pane so that I am not completely without light. The space he leaves is big enough for me to break and escape through, but when he's done he nods, this is Tom trusting me again. It's a pleasant feeling, it leaves me aching for the impending loss of that feeling.

While he completes his duties Alex attempts to distract me with a game of Scrabble, during which I learn she is almost incapable of spelling anything with more than 5 letters (I score 456; her best effort is the word zebra (with double letter on the 'a' for 18). We laugh, it has been a while since I have laughed like that. Tom and I share a joke. I mock his inability to knock in a nail without causing himself injury. But between us, in Alex's sad smile, Tom's turned back, my attempts to make small talk, the entire affair is tainted by the expectation of the moment when he will finish his task and will leave me to only Alex's company for this month of nails.

He pauses at the door a little before he leaves, box of nails in hand. I am arguing about Alex's misspelling of the word 'tired' and look up. The moment lingers.

Tom nods.

I nod, "I'll be alright," I tell him. "Tell the man at the cafe I'll be back at work in a month." I smile. Perhaps he realises I am being brave. He scratches his head. Leaves, closes the door. Alex and I look up at each other. She says nothing either. It seems like hours before Tom starts hammering nails into the door.

"it's T-I-R-E-D, not T-I-E-R-D" I explain with a sigh, but in my head I am counting the second nail into the coffin of my room.

**Monday (early)**

Alex suggested she stay with me tonight but I thanked her, as kindly as I could, and told her I would be quite alright by myself. I don't want her here. I find I need to be alone now. It's better that way.

I am unsure of the time but it has been dark outside for some hours when I finally get up. I head straight to the wardrobe and open it, finding the box at the bottom of the cupboard I pull it towards the moonlight pooling upon the floor, open it and discover what I had hoped I might find.

There they are. They are real. A pair of womens' shoes with heals so high they could pierce a man straight through. They feel real. They look real.

They are Belinda Weaver's. I would recognise them anywhere. They are the shoes of a woman who walked her life into mine. I took her life from her, and she gave me mine back in return. Connie insisted she was out there, abstaining, keeping a promise to me.

I sit the shoes a few feet in front of me, alone, without their owner, in the dark.

I smile when I think of her flashing about with them on her feet.

_"I buy a pair every time I kill one of your lot."_

_"What am I going to be then, Miss Weaver?"_

_"A nice pair of Jimmy Choo's, since you ask, Hal."_

I lean back against the bed and try to focus. Whatever comes first, Belinda, or Tom, there's no use fighting it now. I'll have to try.


	9. Wait & Hope

**Chapter 9 - Wait and Hope**

I takes me a few days to find a routine which appropriately distracts me.

6.00 listen to the 'Today' show

8.00 Alex arrives with something that passes for breakfast. She invariably spills the milk.

8.03 I clean up the milk

8.05 I eat/complain about the meal. The sugar and additive content seems to depend upon on how much she intends to annoy me.

8.10-8.15 Argue with Alex about the sugar or additive content of my breakfast.

"But blue food is good for you!"

"Blue food, Alex, on no planet, for no species, super natural, natural or otherwise, could ever be considered _good for you._"

"What about Blue berries, hum, haven't thought of that have you Heston?"

8.30 Throw Alex out

8.32 Press ups

9.00 count the swirls on the wall

10.00 count the stripes inside the swirls on the wall

Approx.10.04 Alex disturbs counting (it's a mercy that she's predictable, I put this down to a probable dearth of good television programming at this time of the day)

10.15 Keep Alex occupied until she leaves me be, this invariably involves a board game

11.25 Throw Alex out.

11.30 Sit ups.

12.00 You & Yours.

13.00 Alex provides tea and biscuits. We discuss the disappearance of her body. She shows off some of her tricks. I am grateful that this is normally a more civilised visit. I ask after Tom, she informs me he is fine; I know from her tone that he is not.

14.45 Cycling.

15.35 I attempt to sleep, knowing that it will be unlikely I will rest during the night hours in my present condition. This inevitably results in me staring at the ceiling for half an hour before I rise and resort to...

16.00 Pacing.

17.00 Alex brings water and something like Dinner.

"Turkey twizzlers are _not _a food group."

"Aye, well they worked perfectly well fer my brothers! Anyway you're dead, what do you care?"

"Food is the subject of study and..."

"...and what, I thought you said it all tastes like crap to you anyway!"

"That is somewhat besides the point."

"Which you seem to be failing to get to."

"Well, if you would let me finish!"

"Now, now, no need to get arsey grandpa."

"I'm not being...I'm simply trying to point out that it wouldn't be too much effort to make me a sandwich. Even a blind man knows the difference between a brick wall and a beautiful sunrise."

"I microwaved that for at least twenty minutes; it should taste dead sunshiny !" she shoots out a smug smile.

"The Microwave! Do you know how unhygienic those things are?"

She shrugs, "I wiped it down with a cloth from the sink."

"Out. Of. The. sink?"

"Yeah."

"Well, that's alright then isn't it, do you know what e-coli does to a Vampire's intestinal system?"

"Nothing?"

"It gets messy Alex, very messy."

17.30 Throw Alex out.

17.37 Read Count of Monte Cristo.

17.45 Find myself wondering if I can tunnel my way out of the room with a spoon.

18.00 Put down the Count, resort to reading some of the books Alex brought for me.

18.32 Call Alex and insist she burns the book(s) she has brought me for crimes against nature

18.35 Return to the Count.

19.10 Tom knocks on the door, the conversation generally passes thus:

"Hal?" he asks, annunciating my name in that way he does when he tries too hard. It makes me smile.

I take myself to the door and settle by it. He does the same, "Hello Tom, how was work?" I listen. He tells me about the broken fryer; the stories that Old Fred trots out; the methods he engaged to throw out the regular gang of brats that like to come inside and tease him (I employed scare tactics, Tom favours a headlock); and all manner of mundane wonders, which I find I miss.

Then he asks after my day. I educate him in the way to best clean a microwave; place an order for fresh fruit and vegetables; and tell him I'm doing just fine.

"Same time tomorrow, mate?" he asks.

"Same time, Tom," I insist. I stay there and listen to him attempt to pry out one of the nails.

20.00 I take Belinda's shoes out of the cupboard, place them on the floor and focus on not diving out the window and murdering all of South Wales. I quote Dumas into the darkness " 'All of human wisdom is contained in these two words - wait and hope', wait and hope, Hal, wait and hope."

00.00 Connie visits

As opposed to Alex, Connie, it appears, is a better conversational companion. Perhaps because she is a woman of more mature years, who has seen a good deal in her time as a medium including, it appears, a large number of spirits of my own making, we find we have a good deal to talk about. We converse in hushed tones, so as not to disturb Alex or raise any alarms. Connie tells me of her adventures, for example, there was an incident with a spirit that grew quite attached to her when she was a young woman; a male ghost who left flowers for her wherever she went. He stole her tickets to theatre shows and the Royal Variety Performance every Christmas. Eventually, when he realised there could be nothing between them while they were alive, he spent two years trying to engineer an 'accident' for her so that he could be with her in her death.

"Tough break up," Connie says with a smile as she explains how she employed a fellow medium to exorcise him. "Didn't deserve it, but they can get a little clingy these ghosts."

I found myself thinking of Alex with amusement.

It is when I start asking after Belinda that Connie gets itchy and makes excuses to leave. "Not today dear, I'll tell you tomorrow," she will say, or, something of that nature.

It's on the third day that I share with her some of the stories from my earlier 'detoxes'. She asks after my photograph of Leo, that starts the conversation. I tell her of how we met, of how he inspired me to be a better man, to lead a quieter life, to history-make in the mundane over the magnificent. I tell her about Pearl, the Dominoes, South End. The next day she brings me my old box of Dominoes. She puts them at the end of the bed.


	10. The Incident

**Chapter 10 - The Incident**

"Tom!"

I hammer upon the door until my fists are blue with bruises.

"Alex!"

I look at the window. I could break the glass easily. Not today, Hal, the problem isn't out _there_. The problem is in _here_. Or more specifically, in there.

I can smell it. I can smell blood, old, dead blood. Lots of it, and I can't say for sure why it terrifies me so much, except that there is a distinct odour to it: bitter, rotting peaches; sour, rancid cream.

"Tom, Alex, where are you?"

Alex should be here now. I throw the sheets off the bed, the mattress too and tip the bed up on its side. I take hold of a spoke from the bedstead with two hands, certain that if I can prise one free I will be able to fit it under the door and perhaps lever it open to reach my friends. It takes a good few minutes to force the spoke from its home.

My radio lies upon its face on the wooden floor, hiding its teeth. Its aerial is bent. The white noise that spoke to me moments before now squawks empty threats into the old pine.

Trying to lever the door fails. So I throw the spoke away. It bounces off the wall onto the bed as I take a run up, shoulder first into the wood with all my force. It jars me sharply, straight to the neck and then out through the other side. I stumble backwards, but keep to my feet, wipe my forehead free from the sweat of the endeavour and try again. And again. And again until I am on my haunches by the door and trying to prise it away with my fingernails.

The radio buzzes again. It sounds like its laughing. A soft, feminine sound, laughing at me.

"Shut up!" I yell at it, slamming my hands over my ears so I don't have to hear it, " Shut up!"

When it quietens I pull myself up and kick the radio away with disgust, like it is road kill. It flies under the wardrobe and jams there in the dark.

"They're gone, Hal," Sue Mcregor says sternly, it is 7 am, the _Today_ show has never been this personal before.

"Shut up, childish haunting doesn't scare me. Who are you?" I try bravado on for size but it doesn't fit. Why haven't they come? Where are they? I haven't had a moment of peace in months, they are always there, Alex & Tom, Tom & Alex.

This silence, that scent, those words. It is all meant to scare me. I won't let it. It's just a game. I shan't play.

"They're not coming back, Hal," Sue says.

"Shut up!"

"They're dead, Hal."

"You will get no rise from me, whoever you are."

"I killed them, Hal" That voice isn't Sue's, not any more. "You don't need them," it curls its way from under the wardrobe. "They're gone. It's just you and me babes," the dulcet tones and teasing vowels of Belinda Weaver. She hums. Our song. It makes my spine ache.

I throw myself toward the wardrobe, reaching underneath to retrieve the radio. It won't come free. "How dare you take her voice! How **fucking** dare you! I'm going to find out who you are and I'm going to rip your ethereal skull out from the other side of existence and crush it! Do you know who I am! How dare you toy with me! How DARE YOU!" I scream into the dust and the darkness. Backing away I take hold of the spoke from the bed and bring it down on the wood. I shatter it. I tare at it. I pull it apart. I scratch through the debris to retrieve the radio and I scream at it, "I will hunt you down! I will hunt your family down! I will send your loved ones and friends and their loved ones and their friends to torture you until you beg for Hell, do you hear me!"

"Hal?"

I look up to find Alex and Tom looking back down at me. Alex's face is painted with pity, Tom's with confusion, and sweat. I look to the door, they have pried it open. Tom has a crowbar in one hand, a stake in the other.

"...and what is it you are actually doing about this situation Minister?" Sue Mcregor demands from the Radio.

I laugh.

"Hal ?" Tom asks again.

I point at the radio, "The man from the DTI."

"You were screaming for us!" Alex chastises. "We thought ye'd lost it."

"I dropped my radio." I try to pull myself up.

"You flattened the wardrobe," Tom explains, "That we're George n' Nina's wardrobe."

"It got stuck, and I can't stand this man," I say by way of an excuse. "I'm fine. Just fine. All's well."

"You're bleedin', mate." Tom points at my knuckles.

"A scratch, that's all, from the wardrobe."

"And what about tha'?" Alex points at the decimated bed frame.

"Couldn't sleep?"

"Right! Back to Plan A," Tom says, threatening me with his stake, "You ain't ready mate."

I drop the radio and raise my hands, "I'm fine. A minor slip that's all. Look, I took it out on the furniture. No running off. No killing. No blood except mine."

Except that which I can still smell, where is that coming from!

"He's hiding something! I can tell," Alex insists. "Something set him off, he was fine yesterday."

"I'm going to knock you out now, mate," he pockets the stake and raises the crow bar, "Sorry an' everythin' but you ain't ready."

I cover my head with my hands to deflect any blow, "I'm still here Tom! Don't you think if I wasn't getting better I would have already left?"

But Tom doesn't drop his blow. Tom is sniffing.

"Tom, you alright?" Alex asks, "Come on, deck him and let's get this over with. I'm missin' Ceebeebies."

"You aren't helping, Alex!" I tell her.

"Shut up, the both-a-yer," Tom sniffs again and then looks at me, then out the doorway. Can he smell it too? Or do I need a wash? Then he points at me with the stake, "Right, last chance mate, I swear it. Somethin' ain't right, and this may not be a perfect plan but at least its a plan till we figure it out. Seriously, though, if you're messin' us about, like."

"I solemnly swear," I put my hand to my dead heart, "Whatever is going on I have had no hand in it. How could I have? Cross my heart and hope to, well, you get my point."

Tom laughs, it's a good thing to see, before he shuffles awkwardly from one foot to the other and scratches his head with the crowbar, "Yeah, well, nice one for not..."

"..running off and killing everyone?"

"Yeah, that." He nods at me, "Last chance though, mate."

"Last chance, I understand. Perhaps you should take this? The DTI man seems to be flavour of the month."

I hand the radio to him. He gives Alex the stake, which she wields with joy. He takes the radio from me and leaves, picking the door up as he goes. "Alex stay here," he instructs.

"But..."

"All day."

"What!" - "What!", we trill in unison.

"Tom, if you want a sure way to drive me insane this is it." - "All he does is whine and lecture and then whine some!". Our empty protests fall on deaf ears.

"Just for a day or two, just to make sure, like."

"But what about Ceebeebies!"

But, what about Connie? I wonder. Will she visit?

I am not sure how I will prevent insanity now. At least without a radio this faceless spirit that attempted to torment me shan't have its way; but with Alex as an alternative I am not sure whether the end game may not be the same. At least I have my dominoes to assist my trying patience. Alex harrumphs against the wall as I retreat to the bedstead and begin to right the chaos my rage had caused.

* * *

**Hope everyone's enjoying so far, I'll be attempting to post more of Part 2 over the next few days before a short break. Please do take the time to review if you can. Spon x**

_Coming Soon: "There is no grief like the grief that does not speak."_**  
**


	11. Grief that does not speak

**Chapter 11 - There is no grief like the grief that does not speak**

"And then you just take them down?" Alex says incredulously. I smile, 'well you are missing out a very important part of that game then' echoes in the walls. I miss Annie more than I think she will ever know.

"Piece by piece," I say.

"I dinnae get it," Alex sighs, "you're weird."

"Better to be _weird_, as you put it, than psychopathic."

"Aye, well, sometimes I wonder."

"You don't mean that Alex," I say beginning to deconstruct the circle. I look at the clock on the wall, it is nearly midnight. Alex tries to balance the stake Tom left her with on the palm of her dead hand.

"I don't but, that's no the point is it. Ha! _Point_, geddit?"

"If you might recall, I made that joke earlier Alex."

"Spoilsport."

"Are you going to stay here _all_ night?" I ask as absently as I can muster.

"Allll night," she smiles. "We can play eye-spy, or charades, or something."

"Are you sure there isn't something more important you could be doing?"

"Trying te get rid of me, eh?" she waggles the stake like a teasing schoolmistress.

"Not at all."

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, _Henry."_

"And the highest form of flattery, _Alexandra_"

She lollops over to the table and sits opposite me with an almost corporeal weight. The table wobbles and I do my best to steady it. "I missed this," she says.

"Causing me mental and physical anguish?"

"Nah, just the banter."

"You seem to forget that we knew each other for very little time before our current situation."

Alex laughed, "I worked you out soon as I met you."

"I find that somewhat hard to believe. There was the little unnoticed matter of me being a Vampire."

"Well obviously I don't mean that of course." She rolls her eyes and laughs lightly at her omission.

"Of course," I humour her.

"Oi," she thumps me in the arm. I try to control the urge to upturn the table and squeeze her into an incorporeal haze, by concentrating my rage into taking down the next pieces. Stretching out the wrath through my fingertips as I do so.

"Anyway, what I mean is I knew you were good for a laugh."

I sit back in my chair, it creaks, and rest my hands on my lap. "I'm sorry, did you just say_ 'good for a laugh'_ ?"

"Aye, all tha'… stuffedupness –"

"- that's not a word, Alex."

"- I knew under all that buttonedupness –"

I roll my eyes and return to my deconstruction.

"- there was this nice person who would make me laugh. That's why I asked you out."

"Do we really have to go there? I have been trying to forget about it."

Alex is quiet now, I have clearly offended.

"Look, that wasn't what I meant."

"Really, what _did _you mean?"

"I mean what came after, Alex, if it hadn't been for me, as you recall, you would be alive. It's not something I am proud of."

"Could have fooled me, the way you waltzed into that bar, Casanova."

"Alex."

She is on her feet now. "Swanning in all coked up an'…"

"I don't _do _that."

"No, of course you don't. What word do you people use to describe it then? HMM?!"

"I'm not in the mood for this. I need to be calm, to concentrate on the task at hand. Alex, please I need to remain…"

"Go on! What do you call _that_? HMM? I'm askin'!"

"I can tell you're upset, please calm down."

"I'm askin'! Go on, what do you call it, 'On the Blood'?"

"Alex."

" 'Bloddo'?"

"Alex, please."

"'Completely Bloodered'? 'Away with the vampires'? 'Three blobs to the wind'?"

"Alex!"

"What then?"

I hesitate. She is not going to leave me in peace, this I have realised. I know it is callous but I feel I have to use this rage to my advantage.

"What!"

"_Blood drunk_," I explain coldly, "We call it 'blood drunk'."

I can feel that monumental anger building. "Blood!" The lights flicker, "Drunk!"

"Alex you need to keep yourself calm."

"Oh hoho, that's rich. How much blood does it actually take to get 'drunk' on it, Hal, a pint, two pints, three, six…a whole virgin! Two! What is the average exactly for an Old One like you? How much had you had?"

The old me stops me from answering, 'a single glass' is frankly embarrassing, I refuse to give her the ammunition. I shall never hear the end of it. "Enough," I say.

"Enough!" she laughs, the light by the bed fuses. "Clearly it wasn't, Hal, clearly you hadn't had nearly 'enough'."

"Alex, you need to calm down, I need…"

"I don't give a fucking shiny button what you _need_, Hal, shall I tell you what I _need_ I need my fucking body. I need to be curled up in front of the telly with my brothers and shouting at my dad for burning the dinner. I need to be getting drunk with my girlfriends in Glasgow and growing old, and havin' babies, and getting off with random blokes under bridges, and catching STDs, and NOT SITTING HERE BABY SITTING MY FUCKING MURDERER!"

"I didn't kill you Alex!" I plead. I shouldn't have answered. It's not worth it. How could I cruelly crave the company of that damned dead medium over this poor girl.

"You wielded the weapon though!"

"Alex, I didn't!"

"I told you he gloated didn't I! Got all Scooby villain on me."

"Yes, Alex." I stand to try to calm her but she just backs away.

"He told me about _you_ too."

I stop. Speechless. What did Cutler tell her?

"He told me how he wanted to _impress_ you. How you _made _him, like you _made _Belinda right? You changed him into ...into..."

"A vampire," I nod, sadly.

"A _weapon_, and then you enjoyed the spoils."

"Alex, if you really think…"

"I don't know what to think, Hal." She is pacing now.

"I just needed to know his plan. I explained this."

"I feel sick." Another light pops, we are almost in darkness now.

I run to her. "Alex, please," but she pushes me away.

"Leave me alone! Will you realise I dinnae want to hear you speak right now."

I stop.

"I feel sick," Alex repeats eventually. "I'll be fine is just need some fresh air."

"Tom said you should stay," I remind her, because it is my duty to do so, as a friend, as a captive, as the guilty party, as someone who wants her to leave.

"You know sometimes I wish you would just loose it. It would make it easier to hate you. Do you know how fuckin' insulting it is to know you're just this big soppy wolly. I mean, the man Cutler described, the man you _apparently_ were, perhaps if you were him my death might at least have meant _something_."

"You don't want that."

"No. No I don't. That's what hurts the most. It meant nothing."

"Alex…" I sigh, "It meant _everything_."

"Oh aye?"

"What if it hadn't have been you? What if the blood Cutler gave me had come from a stranger, someone I had never met, never cared for, never worried about or wanted…"

Alex's eyebrows raise, "Careful Hal, you're in terrible danger of being sincere."

"You know what I mean. If he hadn't have chosen you do you think I would have put myself through months of this agony. Do you think I would have stood up to Snow, survived loosing Annie, the baby, do you think Tom would have been able to cope, do you think I wouldn't have run off with Belinda. Alex, your death, it meant _everything_. I wish it didn't but the tragedy is that if it hadn't have been you I don't know where I would be right now. Probably not here."

"You're a dick," she smiles.

"Also probably true. How do you feel?"

"Still like I want to vomit."

"You won't be able to, you're a ghost; but that's a lot of pent up energy you have there, best let it off at a safe distance rather than in the house. I don't think Tom will want to fix _all_ the electrics in the morning. I recommend the woods…"

"Or I could just short-circuit the Millenium Stadium again. You get 30 minutes, you're alrigh' with your dominoes right? You're no' going anywhere?"

"I told you, I don't need you to stay, everything is fine."

"30 minutes, Psychokiller," she disappears. I sigh.

I return to the table, to the meticulous replacement of my dominoes to their rightful home. I know Connie arrives not long after Alex leaves but she leaves me to my endeavour in peace. I am grateful for the way she respects my process. When I'm done I close the lid on the box and wait for her to join me at the table. She slides into the seat Alex left behind. She places a box on the table. It's another box of dominoes.

I laugh, "Connie, that's a very nice thought but I have -"

"I'm sorry, Hal," she begins, "but I disagree. I think you might need them."

I am taken aback by her tone. "Really, Mrs Simm, as you can see I have more than enough distraction to keep me occupied. You can tell Miss Weaver that I am perfectly in control and she can visit whenever she is able."

"No, Hal, I'm afraid I can't. I didn't know how to tell you." She pushes the box closer. "I'm sorry, Hal. Really. Whatever I can do...just ask."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"She's gone, Hal."

My stomach begins to rage, is she suggesting what I think she is suggesting? "Please, Mrs Simm, can you try to be clearer."

"She's dead, Hal."

"I'm so-sorry?" I hadn't misheard?

"Staked."

I stand, the chair upon which I was sitting falls. "No. You're lying."

Mrs Simm stands too. "Whatever you need, Hal, I'll keep visiting." She opens the lid on the box. "Just keep it together okay. That's what she would have wanted."

Is the Universe conspiring to drive me into the arms of my otherself? With the bombshell still rolling on the wooden floor about me, teasing the walls, but remaining unexploded I remember Tom's words, 'last chance' he said. I want to scream. I want to tear the bricks from their mortar. I want to smash through the window and take each shard and blind the world. I want... I want to let go.

Alex returns. I am standing alone in my room holding onto the wall for fear of falling. "All done," Alex says. I can't respond. I have no words any more. I return to my table and I take out my dominoes again. I need a distraction. I can't talk to Alex in case I explode. I can't do anything except the familiar.

"Hal, come on, look I'm sorry, I didnae mean what I said."

I focus on my construction.

"Hal, seriously, the silent treatment."

"Stay or go." I say, "I don't care but please, Alex, just for a while, let me do this."

She sits on my bed and watches. I tune her out, and the rest of the world. Right now it's all I can do. Silence has to be my refuge, or else I might just break.


	12. Time & Silence

**Chapter 12 - Time & Silence**

Every minute without hope feels like a year. I have felt grief before, a thousand times over, each cycle brings its own losses, its own heartbreak, its own death toll. Not this time it seems. I have no energy to kill. Grief has stripped it from me and left me a husk. What do you call a vampire that doesn't hunger? It sounds like the opening to a bad joke.

Alex visits most days but it seems, for the most part, as if she has had the volume turned down. She talks, of course, but it's like her voice is stuck down a deep dark hole and I will be damned if I am going to throw her a rope.

Tom knocks on the door when he comes home from the café. "You there mate?"

"I'm here." I answer, but that's all. He tells me about his day at first, but when he finds I don't respond even that dies down.

I sit, often, and few thoughts pass me by, except those that remind me it is _my fault_. Everything is my fault. Alex: dead, the fault of my lust. Cutler: a weapon, the fault of my hubris. Annie and Eve: gone, the fault of my cowardice. Then there is Belinda. She was innocent once, I could see it in her eyes, and then my history entered her present. It happened without my knowledge, those deeds of mine poisoned her life. They stripped the girl away and put a vengeful thing in its place, and then, after that, I had the audacity to make a monster of her.

When I laugh it is because I remember how she forgave me.

The forgiveness of others means nothing if you can't forgive yourself.

Then there is Tom, he is too young to have yet been spoiled. There is time. It's coming, I can smell it: all that disappointment.

I was waiting and hoping. Now I only wait. I am waiting for Tom to open that door and open his arms with joy to know I am 'better', only to realise I have not changed. I cannot change, except for the worse. I may have no hunger, no thirst, no desire for anything right now. I may comfortable in my cage, it is warm and a good place for grief, but out there, once that door is opened I know it will return. "What do you call a vampire that doesn't hunger?" I joke to myself. "Patient." I conclude.

I know I cannot take the coward's way out. I have tried, a vain attempt that led to Alex _de-treeing_ my room. But I will not fling myself willingly on a stake, we vampires like to survive; but I _will_ force Tom to do it. Once that door is open some act of cruelty upon my part will finally sever that trust he has built. He will _have_ to do it then, be a man, take charge of the situation, and relinquish the thing he hoped would fill the great void left by the death of his father, by his friends. He will stake me, and I will let him. It will make a man of him, and that will be my fault too. I could leave, save him the pain, but I don't. Perhaps I want to see it in his eyes when he realises I have never been his friend, just a wild animal that he failed to tame. The old cruelty has already found its way in the back door and put its feet up by the fire then? I hadn't even noticed the draft.

Connie visits every night as she did before she dropped the bombshell. It knocks at her heals, waiting for that final nudge, when she arrives. "How's Hal today?" she asks.

"How?" I ask from my bed, where she generally finds me. "How did she die?"

Connie doesn't answer. She flusters, "you don't want to know," or, "It doesn't matter," or, "it was quick".

"Come back when you can give me more than platitudes," I say. She leaves me another box of dominoes and vanishes.

I build the dominoes to stop me from imagining. All manner of visions enter my old head when I don't. I keep picturing her dying. It's like the image of that beautiful face collapsing into ash represents everything I have lost over the last five hundred years, youth, innocence, beauty, ambition, life, love, lust, vengeance, the good, and the bad, the monsterous and the magnificient.

I imagine the people that might have taken a stake to her, they are wolf, they are human, they are vampire, they are ghosts. Everyone I have ever encountered seems to make an appearance. Snow stakes her because she is mine; Cutler because I loved her more; Annie because she brings out the bad in me; Leo because she represents what I have become; Fergus because she teases him; Wyndam because he can. All my past lovers raise a stake to her. All those I killed do the same, because they know how it hurts me as much as I hurt them. At its worst the one that wields the stake is Tom. That vision persists. I bury myself under the covers when it comes.

"What you thinkin' about." Alex says. She is curiously loud today I put my fingers in my ears. She lands at the foot of the bed. I fail to answer. "Crotchet?" I turn over in my bed and bury my face in the pillow. "Cricket!" I turn over again and hold the pillow over my face, hugging it close until she gets the point. "Home Brewing?" Alex thumps on the pillow with her fist. "MmMDhR?" I hear her and throw off the pillow, "What did you say?" I ask.

"I said, 'murder'?" Alex says in that jokey Scottish way, elongating all the consonants. She is holding Belinda against the bed by her throat. She brings down the stake, with a crunch, pinning Belinda to the mattress, covering my bed in a cloud of ash. Belinda's eyes still look at me as they collapse in on themselves like little balls of icing sugar. I turn away and will the vision gone, but I can still hear it, the dust dances around my cheeks. I pick up my dominoes and focus on them until I am left alone.

That night Connie comes, "How's Hal today?"

"How did it happen?" I ask.

This time she pauses, "You really want to know?"

"I want to know. I have to know."

"You don't want to," she says.

"Please, Connie." I sit up in bed. I turn on the light. "It's torture not knowing. You are _sure_ she's dead?"

After a moment, Connie nods.

"Then I have to know how."

Connie swallows, "She was coming here," she says quietly. "I told her how well you were doing. She wanted to see you, congratulate you. I think your friends saw it differently."

Everything in my body tenses.

"No, please," I pray, "Not them? Christ, tell me it wasn't them." I haven't prayed since I was turned. It is a surprising involuntary response, one that I know for a fact it is pointless.

"I think it was the wolf that did it. That's why…"

"Tom wouldn't do that."

"…that's why I need to get you away from them. They don't have your best interests at heart."

"When did this happen?"

"The day before I told you."

Doubt slips away as I remember that scent: rotting peaches, rancid cream. Had the spirit which tormented me that day been Belinda? Was that possible, generally we vampires didn't get the opportunity of a death rattle.

I realise. Tom walked her death into this house! "Fucking hounds," I swear, "Leo was a one off I knew it, they can't be trusted. They should be put down all of them."

"No, come on Hal, you were doing so well, don't give in now." Connie doesn't seem convinced by her own words.

He walked her up the stairs! He brought her into this room! He taunted me with that stake... had he just killed Belinda with it! They thought I brought her here. I did...it was my fault, but I didn't make the weapon that killed her this time.

I wanted to kill Tom in that very moment. I remembered the rage from the time before, how I had wanted to tear his limbs from their sockets, how that feeling kept me going until they told me it had all been a ruse. And even after that they have the nerve to take her from me again. The anger I feel doesn't manifest the same this time. It sits in my stomach and curdles. It plans. What I want isn't out there, there's no point in running away, what I want will come to me.

"Thank you, Connie. For everything. I can take it from here," I insist calmly, and then when she is gone I find a different quote from Dumas fits my mood. Be damned with waiting and hoping. _"For all evils there are two remedies - time and silence." _ There isn't much left of my month of nails to go, plenty of time to plan how best to settle the score with my 'friends', waiting will be a pleasure now. It will only make it more enjoyable when the time comes.

The bombshell, that rolls around the floor, starts to tick.


	13. From behind closed doors

**Chapter 13 – From behind closed doors**

"Hal? I got ye a new toothbrush. Can I come in? Look, I'm sorry but ye did like drink my blood an' …Seriously, look, I'm bored. I'll play Scrabble. Christ, Trivial Persuit! Or we can even try Risk again; but you're no playin' Germany, not after the history lecture last time, you're France and you'll have to deal with that! Look, so I'm just coming in. Don't be naked or anything, that's just…well, I warned ye so it would just be creepy if you hadn'e pants on, or... something. I'll count te five okay? One, Two, and another thing, make a space, ye've no excuse. Still a clear spot by the window right? Three, four…"

I'm used to this interruption now. She is normally as easy to ignore as the other ghosts of my past. When I am rid of Tom she won't take long to shake loose.

"Hey," Alex lands on my bed like a sack of over-ripe potatoes. "How's Rainman doin' today'eh?"

"Leave me alone."

"Aye, well I wish I could do that, but ye did…"

"Drink your blood. I recall." It tasted so good, just a shame it all got wasted.

"Yeah. Keeping yourself busy then."

Busy picturing Tom flayed alive on Barry Island beach, "Why are you still here Alex? You should have moved on by now."

"Well, s'cuuuuuuse me for caring."

"You don't care, Alex, this isn't caring. If you cared you'd leave me be."

"So you could rot yourself away in this room, break Tom's poor heart or worse go off and murder the world, as you keep insisting you're capable of doing! No ta, I'll stay put. Y've no hope o' that hun."

She makes me laugh sometimes, if only she knew.

"I'm sorry, I wasn'e trying to be funny."

I calmed and attempted to explain to her what I now knew. "Hope, it's a joke." One could imply I was warning her. She was going to get her feelings hurt if she stuck around. Not long now.

"And the punchline?"

"It doesn't exist," I added.

"Emo-much? Christ, it was just a tooth brush ne need to get all 'what's the point' on my ass Howard Hughes."

I return to ignoring her and she soon evaporates away to her own company. I have built a wall of dominoes to try and keep her out, implying that I might loose my hard won self if she destroys the construction, but it has been a while now since I built it to maintain my control of myself. It's just a device to help pass the time now. Plus it amuses me to keep up the charade.

Connie arrives. "Morning," she chirps, appearing on the bed. She has taken to haunting me in the daytime now. I would rather they all left me alone.

"You needn't keep coming, Mrs Simm." I say, picking up a second box.

"That's what you say, dear, but I told you, I can't move on till I've sorted this out."

"I hate to break it to you but don't think your door will come, Connie."

"Oh well, till it does I may as well keep you company. You look like you need it. When did you last eat?"

"A few months ago," I smile, "give or take."

"No, no, I mean _actual_ food, you're horribly thin. What happened to your exercises?"

"I don't actually _need_ to work out, Connie, or eat, food that is. I'm sure hunger will get the better of me sooner or later though, you have no need to worry."

"But I do worry. It's all such a terrible waste is all."

I hate how they get attached, these spirits. They are like lice. I find I hunger for my own kind these days, better to be revered than be patronised.

There's a little tick, then another, then another, the dominoes begin to fall around my feet. I notice a scent before the sound. I can smell Belinda's blood again. What the fuck is going on? Alex knows better than to mess with me right now. I see then she has delivered me something.

"No! No! No! How dare you!" I chastise loudly, trying to sound convincing, but my acting is hardly good. "Do you know what you've done! You stupid, stupid, bitch!" To be honest I am genuinely annoyed, but only because of the mess she's made. I stride over towards the door to retrieve what she has pushed underneath. I haven't the patience for games.

"Alex! Was that you?! Alex! Alex! Come in here! Al -" It's a postcard?

I pause. Curious, I pick it up. I turn it over. There it is, a big bloody smeared kiss, 'Wish you were here,xoxo" It causes me to stumble, all that hope flooding back in a wave knocks me off my feet when I realise what it is. It's Belinda's blood, dead blood, vampire blood certainly, but _hers_. Put there by her. "No? But it can't be." Was it this I sensed weeks before? Why would she send me postcards if she was intending to visit? When did this arrive?

"She said she'd gone" I look to Connie, but the old ghost has gone. I feel something like realisation begin to work its way in. Slowly the truth begins to dawn, and it burns. I try to remain calm, "Alex, where did you get this? Alex? Did you put this here Alex?" I head to the door, trying to coax her back in to tell me where this came from, or more importantly _when._ "Alex? You need to tell me where this came from. Who sent this? You can tell me." I can hear her shuffling about. "I know you're there,"

"Seriously! Dude can vampires actually hear sarcasm now?"

Her reaction makes me smile, "Alex, it's very important you tell me where this came from. You clearly think it's important I have it. You know what this means, don't you?" Don't scare her, Hal, keep it calm.

"Errrm no, that's sort of why I gave it to ye. 'Cause you're such genius 'n all."

"Did anyone ever tell you irony doesn't actually become you?" Make jokes, like you used to, she said she likes that.

"Yes, you… repeatedly."

Good, good, earn her trust, now: "How long have you had this Alex?"

"Like, a while,"

"A day, a week, two weeks, longer? It's important." I feel my temper fraying again, no need to rush this, Hal.

"That one…a few weeks, but it's no' the only one."

"How many?" Did she know what it meant at all? If they had killed her why would Alex give me this card, if they had promised not to tell me, like Connie had said, it would have been foolish to give me this thing, there had to be a different purpose, and if there was a different purpose then perhaps there was hope.

"A few."

"How many, Alex?"

"Dunno, like a dozen, one came this morning like."

There is was. Perfect, beautiful, honesty. It was so refreshing, like a cool glass of water on a stifling day. "Was that what you and Tom were burning in the garden?"

"Maybes."

It was then. "He knows about them too?"

"Suppose so."

So both Tom and Alex have been hiding these messages from me. There would be no point if they had killed Belinda as Connie had suggested, and there would be no point in lying about it. There was a chance they had worked out that I knew they had killed her and were trying to confuse me, but somehow I put that kind of subterfuge past their capacity. Knowing them, as I had once hoped I did, that meant that neither had the faintest clue what had become of Miss Belinda Weaver and they were simply trying to protect me from her advances the only way they knew how to, good natured dishonesty is a good deal easier to forgive than cold hearted murder. I should know.

"Evasiveness is a little pointless, Alex. These messages have been arriving for a while, as recent as this morning, and you and Tom have been keeping them from me, yes?"

"Fine. Yes!"

"And do you know why Tom thought it best to keep them from me?"

"'Cause he thought ye'd flip out, Hal…tell me ye've no' flipped out!"

I smile, I am geniuinely elated. "That's all I need to know… Thank you, Alex."

She is alive. Well, not _properly_ alive. But close enough.

"Wait… is it from her? Seriously, Hal, is it from that bint, Belinda, 'cause you know I just thought it would be nice to know that she was well, thinking of you n' stuff, but I thought if you knew she was out there you'd like pull your shit together n'all. Hal!"

"Don't worry Alex, you were right, my shit, as you call it, is now well and truly together." I'm leaving.

I break the window. Connie lied. It's all been a game. It was her doing all along. She's been haunting me, taunting me towards the darker part of me. Everything has been toward that end, but I know now Belinda that is out there and I'm going to prove it. She's been reaching out to me, best I leave Tom before I ruin his life. Alex can follow if she so chooses, they have done their best.

These are the thoughts that appear in my head as I notice an old door appear where my wardrobe used to stand.

"Balls. Hal! Hal, seriously, come back!" I hear Alex in the garden. She thinks I have gone already. I am about to call out to her when the door opens. I am not sure what I expect to see but I can't stop looking at it. I turn, realising someone is behind me. This door, of course, isn't for me.

"About bloody time," Connie says.

"You!"

Connie smiles, "Me."

"She's alive isn't she?"

"I wouldn't say that. You took care of that didn't you, Harry? I couldn't let that pass. I realised I wouldn't move on until I made you suffer for it. She was a nice girl, Hal. That particular little Lady was _not_ for turning. You have no idea what you've done to that poor girl, what you took from her!"

I am about to protest, when she waves one giant bingo wing and I fly backwards. I expect to hit the wall but find myself sliding backwards onto the cold wet concrete that I have felt before.

Connie follows. She closes her door behind us and we are alone in purgatory.

* * *

Alex arrives at the cafe in a blink, "T -!" she begins, but she is cut short when he sees what the cat has dragged in. Or, more accurately, what the wolf has brought in.

The cafe is empty, everyone has vacated except Tom, who sits in the middle of the room looking perplexed and holding his hand only inches away from one of the stakes he keeps behind the counter. His hand seems poised to take it up at a second's notice.

There is a dead body in the corner, an old man. "Heart attack," Tom explains absently as they stare at the other guests. "Said there were too much fat in those burgers."

"Tom, is that who I think it is?"

Tom nods.

"And that?"

Tom nods again. "Door came, that guy went in, they came out?"

"Of where?"

"Babes, trust me, you totally don't want to know," Belinda interrupts.

She is covered almost head to foot in blood apart from where she has wiped it away from her face so that they can see it is her. Her auburn hair is matted and thick with it, the gown she wears, a luxurious white one, torn, is stained with it, and she has sticky bare feet which curl in on themselves in the cold. She pulls them up off the floor and tucks them under herself when Alex looks at her. She seems curiously more self-conscious than Alex remembers. Then there is the other guest; at Belinda's knees, on the floor, there is a man. He holds tightly to her, as if a wind might blow him away. She has her arms wrapped around him as he rocks back and forth, like a whipped pup. He seems barely alive. A less than formidable version of the man Alex had once briefly met. The man who used to serve the vampire that terrified Hal, she remembered what he was, a werewolf.

Belinda who sees Alex is staring, helps with the rest, "Alex, Tom, this is Milo. He saved my life...twice. Do him the courtesy he deserves and don't stare."

"Tom, tell me he's safe," Belinda demands, delicately at first. Neither of them answer, so her request becomes more pressing. She looks from Tom to Alex, Alex to Tom, searching their expressions. "Seriously, tell me he's okay!"

"Um." Alex pulls a face, "You mean Hal?"

"No I mean Jesus H Christ, sweetie, who do you think I mean?"

Alex fumes. She fucking hates Belinda Weaver.

Tom jumps in, "Hal's fiiiine," he bluffs, "bit quiet these days like but -"

"Erm, Tom." Alex punches Tom in the shoulder softly. "House meeting!"

"What?"

She grabs him by the scruff of the neck and pulls him to his feet. "House meeting!" she says through her teeth.

By the time they are in the back room Tom has smacked her hands away, "hey, hey, get off"

"Belinda! Fucking! Weaver!"

"I know." Tom says, "S'ok, I ain't letting her in the house after the last time. We can find some way to uninvite her or summit. She won't come in."

"Have you _seen_ her!"

"Er, yeah. I have got eyes Alex."

"She's in a _wedding_ _dress_!"

Tom looked back through the fronds of the plastic curtain, "Is tha' what that is? Thought it'd be pretty like if it weren't -"

"- covered in blood."

"Yeah, covered in blood like."

"No shit. And she's got a pet!"

"Oi!"

"You know what I mean, that guy is scary, Tom, you remember, now look at him! What's she done to him?"

"I don't know. Maybe it wasn't her?"

"You're such a sucker, Tom. She's can't stay, not now, not after..."

Tom's synapses begin to catch up with the situation. "Alex, weren't you meant to be lookin' after Hal?" Alex tries to smile, but despite her best endeavours it seems more like she is passing wind. "Alex, why ain't you lookin' after Hal? Alex? Where's Hal, Alex?" She can see Tom begin to panic.

Alex opens her mouth to speak but is interrupted again. "She's lost him, Tom" Belinda says pulling the curtain aside with a bloody hand. Alex notes that her nails are no longer perfectly manicured, they are gnawed to the quick.

"I havenae lost him!" unconvincing.

"Alex?" presses Tom.

"I havnae lost him it's just... alright, he ran off, but we're perfectly capable of finding him an don't need your help or anything, _Ms_ Weaver, so you can goddamn well go and crawl back in the creepy fucking hole you came out of and take that with ye!"

"Oh Alex, bless. You have no idea do you?" She drops the curtain, and calls after them. "Put the kettle on will you? I'll get the biscuits, and you don't mind if I use your shower later do you, before we go get him? Only, it's been a hell of a day and I think you'll agree this whole ensemble is hideous! And a girl has to look her best for her boy." She tramps back towards Milo, leaving little red foot prints as she goes.

Tom looks at Alex. Alex looks at Tom. Neither says a word. Tom shrugs. Alex rolls her eyes and puts the kettle on.

* * *

**Thanks for reading Don't forget to follow, fave and review if you're enjoying so far. **

**Part 3: ****Coming after New Year.**


	14. Who knows where madness lies?

**Part 3: ****I found me in a gloomy wood, astray**

* * *

**Chapter 14: Who knows where madness lies?**

Canto i: "A little respite to the fear that in my heart's recesses deep had lain" _Dante's Inferno_

The water in the shower is like peace. I hold my forehead to the cold tile and let it wash over my head, my neck, my shoulders, back and down my legs. I watch it pour and turn up the heat until it scolds. It has been so long since I felt clean and there is so much to wash away. The murky red-brown mire pours down the plug hole like hot paint until the water drains away clear. Still, I know it will never truly run clean again.

"Out damn, spot, out I say," and laugh to myself as swill my mouth out with the warm liquid. I swallow a few mouthfuls and wash the remainder around my gums, spitting a murky mass onto the enamel floor. It reminds me of how my mother's hair dye would dollop into the sink as she stained her long red hair 'mahogany dawn'. "Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?"

_"Hmmm – hmm – hmm – hm_" Mother, before my father married her, was a Soprano at Glynbourne. She sang Madam Butterfly to over twenty thousand people before she turned twenty-five. But when I was a small girl she only sang in the bathroom. I peer through the cracks to watch her. When she sees me she smiles and ushers me in. I sit on the toilet seat and listen, legs crossed as she traverses great notes like mountains in the mist of the shower. I smell eucalyptus and ammonia as Puccini's great aria washes over me.

_"Uuuuuuuuuun bel di vereemo_

_Levaaarsi-un fil di feeeeeemo_

_sull'estremo coonfin del maare._

_Eeee pooooi la-a nave apparee"_

Vampires, I have learned, are cursed with perfect recognition. I find this particularly hilarious, you see, I will remember every drawn out second of my life, before and after I was turned by Hal, "just not necessarily in the right order, oh ho ho ho" Eric Morcombe was a genius. Daddy wiggles his glasses like him. Daddy is funny.

I am crying I think and I don't quite know why. Then I remember, how Daddy's blood poured from him. I grab at coarse sponge and the soap from the tray to scrub the memory away. Living, this way, stains. I understand Hal so much more now. I could clean the world and it would make no difference. Although technically I am no more alive than the tile which cools my forehead, I have an abundance of 'life' ahead of me which no amount of scrubbing will remove.

I may as well give it a damn good go though! You can do a lot with the right products in your purse.

_"Ve-e-diiiiiiiiii? È venuuuuuuto!_

_Io non gli scendo incooontro. eeiio no._

_Mi metto là sul ciglio del colle_

_e aspetto,_

_e aspeeeetto, gran tempo_

_e non mi peeeesaaaaa,_

_la lunga-aaah-attesa."_

The soap in the tray is musky. I hold it to my nose and suck it in. It smells of patchouli and sandalwood of well thumbed books with old glue cracking, of sex on warm leather sofas, and once-worn jumpers thrown away thick with the scent of it, of messed up hair and bitten lips. It is animalistic and grandiose, clean and wild. It is a fresh, manish scent. It reminds me of Hal.

_"Chiamerà Butterfly daalla lontaaaana._

_eeio senza dar risposta me ne starò nascosta_

_ un po' per chheliaaaa, e un pooo' per non moriiiiiiiiiiiiiiire"_

It has been a while since I have been able to have had such luxury. It's strange what you miss. I used to have such a life of privilege; something as simple as a bar of soap gives me joy now.

"Hey!" Somewhere there is a heavy knocking.

"Hello?" I turn off the water to see if I had imagined the sound.

"Cut it owt!" I am ordered from the other side.

I pull myself out of the shower and pad towards the door. Wiping soap from my eyes and squeezing the conditioner out of my hair, I open the door, "What?"

"You were singing. Sounds like a cat pissin' on tin!"

"Was I?"

"Err, yeah."

"Have you found Hal?" I inquire of the ghost as pleasantly as I can do. While Tom was dealing with the police and paramedics at the café, Alex had gone searching for Hal. It was pointless, I told her so. Is it my fault she didn't listen to reason?

Alex doesn't answer my question. I take her silence as a 'No'.

"So are you going to keep looking? Or do you _want_ my help?" I ask Alex innocently, trying to be friendly. In all honesty it's nice to be able to have a conversation with someone mostly real.

"Look, do you know where he is, or not? Cause' I'm totally up to, like, here, with this whole thing and I'm no' standing here, like a lemon, with _you _of all people, while he could be out there doing god knows what! To god knows who! And ruining everything that he's worked so hard for and…and...well that's it, but you get my point."

"Sorry, you lost me somewhere in the middle there, babes. Oh! Do you have any Jasmin Oolong? I have like this mad craving!"

"Huh?"

"I mean I must have the hangover from Hell or something! What did we do last night?"

"Jasmin Who-what?"

"Oolong."

"OhmyGod, just, WHERE'S HAL?"

"Hal who? Does he live here? I mean, have you _seen_ this place. It's so amazingly hideous! I love love love it. It's so fail its fun."

"Seriously, Belinda, don' mess wi'me today! 'Cause I am so, SO, not in the mood for it. Where's Hal? HARRY FUCKING HAL BLOODY YORK!" she spells out as if I am somehow equipped of some kind of special needs. " Posh. Weird. Hasne seen Star Wars and has _terrible_ taste in hens, clearly."

I'll admit I am not entirely sure what she's going on about. All her words jumble into a sort of hebridean mass. I wonder if she's perhaps mad. This no doubt comes across in my expression as she screws up her face and shakes her head in disbelief, "An _actual_ Vampire!"

Something on the ceiling catches my eye. Something dark and sinister. I look up, but it has already gone.

"I think there's something in the house," I whisper.

"Annnnnnd. Ok! Sooooooo, you're-a-nut! I'm not letting you _anywhere_ near Hal when I find him, whichwill be _soon,_" she insists with misplaced high pitched, self-confidence. "Good luck to you, hen, don't let the door kick you in the ass on the way out."

The floor underneath us shakes with a dark howl.

"What the hell was that!" Alex demands, backing away from the stairwell.

"Oh," I smile, reminiscently. "That? That's Milo. Turns out living things, supernatural or not, should not take a stroll in the underworld. Does something to the wiring," I explain tapping my head to indicate Milo isn't quite all there.

"You're telling me."

"Any chance of a hair dryer?" I ask.

"I'm a _ghost_! I don't have hair!" she spits mechanically.

"A ghost?" I laugh and punch her in the shoulder, "You're funny. I'll keep you. Seriously, though, straighteners? Mousse? A full-length mirror? _Please_ tell me you've some touche éclat I can borrow, or some decent moisturiser. My skin is dry as a dead man's ballsack, I must be blemished to buggery."

Alex's eyes seem to pop so far out of her head that they may have fallen onto my toes. Her mouth flops open, "Ye've lost it! Ye've completely lost it!"

"Lost what?"

"You're Lady Belinda Bloody Weaver," she reminds me, as if I have forgotten, "You're a fucking vampire, love."

And so it comes back, like it always does, in a flood of pain and rage. It comes out in bared fangs and bile. I lash out, throwing myself forth into the corridor and pinning Alex to the wall with a soapy elbow at her neck. She feels like marshmallow under my grip. I crack her head against the wall to dizzy her and prevent her from disappearing away.

"I know what I am! You locked me up!" I reminder her, "In a fucking van! Alone!"

She is choking. I don't stop to contemplate how I am succeeding in suffocating a spectral thing. If I have learned one thing recently it is never to look a gift miracle in the teeth. She tries to fight back but succeeds in providing no more resistance than smoke in a plastic bag. "You locked me away. I could have been better. We both could. Instead I…" memories of that place flood my senses in a wave. "I…" So dark. So alone. "They..."

Alex tries to squeeze out a syllable, "Ha…" she begins.

"Hal? Are you jealous, is that it, babes. Did you know they'd come for me. Did you send them? You sent them didn't you!" I put my full weight against her, trying to force the plastic bag to pop, sending her out into nothingness. "You like him don't you?"

"N-" she stutters.

"No?" I laugh, "Give me a break. I'm not stupid. I may have lost a screw or two upstairs but my memory is in perfect working order!"

"N-" Alex grunts.

"I'm sorry what?" I loosen a little to hear her deny it. I could do with a laugh.

Alex coughs. "Naked," she blurts out.

I look down. I am dripping cold water on the floor.

The distraction gives her enough time to head butt me. She gives surprising wellie for one with no skull. The pain shoots down through my nose. My eyes water and wash the monster away. "Ow!" I scold.

"For the RECORD," Alex squeaks, "We locked you in a basement _and_ a van, which was actually the second suggestion (The first being that we skewer you like week old kebab meat) because you _murdered_ three whole people –"

"Two."

"- Whatever, in our house and set Hal back _months_. MONTHS!"

"You locked me away because I gave him something you could never give him." I explain, absently soothing my forehead.

The full weight of the dead was contained in the slap I got for that one. Fair play, I probably deserve it. "I meant forgiveness, what did you _think _I meant?"

"There is _nothing_ going on between me and Hal!" she insists.

"Me thinks the lady doth protest too much."

"Seriously, I'll knee you in the crotch m'Lady, you're not above a shinning."

I smile and suck back the ache in my nose, "Just checking. You know how the saying goes, 'while the cat's away…'"

"The mice tie the other cat to a chair and make it eat rice pudding of a spoon?" Alex smiled.

"Rice pudding?"

"Yep, he hates it"

"There's some justice then," I smile and for a moment it seems as if we are friends.

The moment lingers until it goes cold.

"So." Alex just stands there.

"So?"

"So…are you _going_ to put some clothes on?"

"Oh!" I realise what she's waiting for, "No towels." I explain.

She points at the ruddy red mess of a dress on the hall floor. "There's that."

"Oh, babes, I am not putting that on. You should have my stuff here right? You took it out of Daddy's van right? Tell me you didn't throw it in the docks with the jag."

Alex smiles. "Oh yeah. No we put it in your room."

"My room!"

Alex nods, picks up the dress and throws it at me ceremoniously. I wrap the infernal thing about me in the hope that I might soon be reunited with my wardrobe, or some of it, at least.

"Follow me," she says and I do.

Up one floor on the B&B we go until we reach a white door in the corner. Alex unlocks the door and stands outside, "Madame." she smiles, "your room."

"Funny Alex, you better not have ruined any of my stuff."

"It's all there, one question though, you know where Hal is right?"

"I've a fair idea."

"So, why don't you just tell me?"

"Because it's a long story Alex, and as much as I love Hal I'm in no rush to go get him until after something to eat, a change of clothes, maybe a cup of tea. He's a big boy. He'll be fine for a bit."

"Try me on the short version?" Alex insists, her hand teasing the handle.

"Fine. Hal is in Hell, Alex."

She pouts. "I don't believe you."

"Whatever, you asked. Can I get dressed now?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," she smiles and opens the door. In a second she has disappeared and I feel a great weight behind me propelling me forth. I crash into shelves and boxes and then the door closes behind me. I hear her lock it.

"That's for trying to choke me! You can come out when you're ready to tell us where Hal is! What's left of your stuff is on the top shelf."

My 'room' it turns out, is a storage cupboard. Boxes pile in on me as I struggle to stand. It is small. Dark. Cramped. Panic sets in. Panic is a terrifying thing no matter your species. It is never dignified. It is never rational. It is the opposite of control.

I don't like small spaces. Most importantly, I don't like being stuck in them. It's not surprising really!

Panic brings out the worst kind of monster in me out to fight. It boils out of my empty stomach like hot lava and erupts with equal devastation. Had I a working heart it would have felt like it was about to burst from my throat, without it the explosion comes in sound and physical exertion. It is a sound I screamed silently for more time than I know passed, until the moment Milo found me and gave it voice. It sits there still, shut in a memory I try every moment to erase and cannot, but small spaces rip it out of me. I tear at the cupboard like it is made of paper, blindly scoring the walls, kicking and screaming and shouting and burning the world down with the sound of true anguish.

Truthfully, Alex is very wise not to open the door. It's not a pretty sight.


	15. A funny thing happened

**Chapter 15: A funny thing happened on the way to purgatory**

_Canto ii: I entered on the deep and savage way_

At first the urge to tear into Mrs Simm is palpable. I pull myself to my feet as she closes the door and I am about to attack when I remember that without her present there is no way I can return whence I came. _Think, Hal, Think,_ I remind myself,_ you need her_.

Knowing that I have unwittingly done my friends a disservice, that they probably think that I have disrespected all their hard work by abandoning them in favour of my worser natures, _and_ that Belinda is alive, leaves me eager to return home post haste and set things right.

I am just her guest here, she is my ticket in and my ticket out. This means I can neither harm her, nor let her move on. We need to be friends. Without her I may well be here for eternity.

I stop and dust myself down, adjusting the cuffs of my shirt to the same length and taking in my surroundings. "Well at least they decorated, last time I was here it was a much more bedouin affair, dusty plains and such. Good to see they're keeping up with the times," I say.

This throws the medium from her stride, "You've been here before?"

"When you've covered the entire stretch of the earthly plain you tend to get curious. Doors have a habit of popping up when you kill a lot of people. I've popped in once or twice to take a peek." I try on my most trusting and jovial of smiles to see how that works.

"Once or twice?"

"I'm sorry did you hope that I would fall to my knees in terror at the unknown?" Sarcasm is bad Hal, I remind myself.

Mrs Simm shakes her head.

Praise, we'll go with praise.

"So where shall we begin? Stop me if this is familiar. You needed to make me suffer to get your door to the next world, well done," I clap, "Seriously, I couldn't have done better myself. Separating me from my friends, making me think they had killed someone I love, driving me to want to kill again, absolutely first class." Hal, that's still sarcastic, dammit.

"You can't leave."

"No, No, of course not. Except," I stroll up to her with the calm knowledge that all my years have brought me, "Oh, sorry, I think you'll find I have to. Vampire's don't belong here you know. Eventually purgatory gets bored and spits us out. We give it indigestion. And you won't be able to move on while I'm here. This place is the Security Check for the Hereafter Connie, and having me around is like packing your suitcase full of cocaine. You do not pass go. You can not collect twenty pounds."

"I won't let you," she insists.

"Come now, Connie, the game is up. You got what you wanted."

"You're a devil I won't let you leave. You're going to hell. I was promised."

I laugh, "Hell!"

Connie seems unamused.

"Oh, you genuinely think that it exists," I force my laughter to cease, it's not fair to mock the belief systems of others. I try not to sound patronising, but I know that it will eek through a little no matter how hard I try, "Connie, you need to realise that _this _is it. This is your afterlife. There is no hell, no heaven, just a place between existence and non existence. What happens when you pass over I will never know, we don't get to go to that party, but if there is one thing I have learned is that there's only prizes for good behaviour. The bad don't get punished in the hereafter, life is punishment enough."

"If there ain't no hell, then where do Vampires come from?"

"You think we are some how demonic? In the pointy horn, get-the-to-a-nunnery, way of the world? No, no, Connie we're just something as horrible as any other kind of monster the earth has produced. There is no mystery to us. There is no realisation of Satan's intent. We are just a corruption, that is all, evolution in Darwin's terms, an entropy of the human form. You've read too many novels Connie."

"I don't believe you."

"As you wish."

"Vampires belong in hell."

"Metaphorically I don't disagree with you, and if it does exist I'm sure, at some point in the future there's a room there with my name on it. But it doesn't."

Connie's great fat face falls flat. She flops down like a dead weight by the door. Honestly the reaction is a little disappointing.

"He said you'd go to hell," she mutters to herself in a dejected manner, flapping her arms at her side like a disgruntled walrus. Now I am curious, I thought she was doing this all on her own.

"Who said?"

"No one," Connie added, flusters. "No one at all."

"Now come along, don't be like that. Someone has clearly confused you, was it another vampire?"

Connie looks at me as if I have somehow insulted her by insinuating she would fraternise with my kind. I sit down beside her, which visibly riles her.

"You know there are worse things than Vampires in the world."

"Not by my reckonin' there ain't, love."

"I've been around Connie. I'm certainly no innocent and, true, I've seen some pretty horrific acts, conducted a few myself I'm ashamed to say, but I've seen humans, werewolves, even ghosts conduct worse atrocities. I've committed no genocide, started no war..."

"No, but you broke a poor girl's heart."

"I hate to tell you Connie, but there have been several..."

"She was going to be married you know. He was such a lovely boy."

"Connie, I'm really not sure what you're referring to. Do you mean Belinda?"

"Of course I do. He loved her, ever since they were little'uns, and they were going to be married, and happy, and you made her...into one of you."

"Belinda was going to be married!" I couldn't help but find this shocking, and a little amusing. "I'm sorry but I find that hard to believe."

"Lovely, beautiful girl like that and you're surprised? They was intended."

I recall Belinda's talk of marriage, of how she found it abhorrent, of the men she had strung along. I wondered if some poor deluded soul had fallen foul of her games. By report, he wouldn't have been the first. I counted myself amongst her conquests, and was hardly ashamed of it, quite the opposite. Belinda Weaver and 'commitment' were two mutually exclusive creations. Then again, she did promise to stay with me? Would she have stayed if Tom and Alex hadn't whisked her away?

"Intended?" I ask, "An arranged marriage then? Did Belinda know?"

"They loved each other."

"That doesn't answer my question, Connie?"

She's getting nervous again and I put two and two together. "Does he know what happened to Belinda?" I ask.

"Well someone had to tell him. You should have seen how broken up he was about the whole thing. They came out saying she was dead in the papers. They paraded her body in front of her Mama, but I knew better. I knew what had gone on. I knew what was _going_ on, where they was taking her. And I couldn't stop it. Then I sees him at the funeral, and I ain't seen someone so heart broken as that poor boy was. Two lives you took when you turned her, Hal, hers and then his. I ain't so much bothered about mine, but to see that boy looking like that. I went to talk to him, and would you know he could see me! He tells me how they were going to be married, and how he had always been there for her. He knew what she'd been up to you see. That she was off killing vampires. He got himself work for this archive that monitors your lot. He used to feed her info, discreetly like, about incidents in this place or that place, because he knew what she would do with it. He loved her. He would do anything for her. He looked out for her. But he'll find her, he promised me he would, and then they'll be together and you can go to hell!"

It was sometime half way through her speech that I noted Connie was becoming a little 'thinner' so to speak. It was when she had finished her rodomontade that I realised what she was doing. She was drifting, fading...on purpose.

"Connie? Connie what are you doing, you need to stay here," I insisted. "I need to know more. Stay here Connie, please."

She shook her head. I wonder when she realised I was working hard to make her stay for a reason. She clearly had done. "If I go, you stay. Right?" she confirmed.

"You can't do this!" I insist, as she continues to will herself into nothingness just out of spite! "Stay, there's more after this for you. I swear."

"If there's no Hell, Hal, then there ain't no Heaven either, I'm better off gone. At least then you'll be alone here, stuck too, no worse suffering than that I'd say. That's Hell enough." She is almost gone now. I cling to the air that she was; trying to hold on with futility. What's left of her stands, as do I. I try to open the door to take advantage of what little connection there is left. But when I succeed in opening it, there is nothing beyond, just darkness. I shut the door immediately. The connection is gone. Connie didn't even say goodbye.

* * *

I can't say how long I sit there, but it feels like an age. It is long enough to contemplate what an idiot I have been. Long enough to turn over Connie's last words until I can recite them. Long enough to miss Alex's incessant plaguing of me. Long enough to miss Tom's encouragement. Long enough to try every door in the vain hope I find release. Long enough to be reminded of some of my worse indiscretions in the process. Long enough to shed a tear. Long enough to scream at the world. Long enough to curse myself and all who have known me. Long enough.

* * *

Eventually a young man approaches down the corridor. He is smartly dressed in a grey suit. He has a thin face, a pointed chin and an unnervingly large mouth. He's a little shorter than I am, considerably thinner. His hair is dark, neat. His smile is wide. There is something fey to him. He is puckish and gaunt. He walks with the kind of slow confidence I used to bear when I was at my most dangerous. I take an instant disliking to him as he holds out his hand.

"Hello there," he says casually, as if we were meeting at a social affair. "Tiresome woman, thought she'd never leave. Sorry it took me a while to get here, bit of a labyrinth isn't it. I'm Mr Kobayashi. Kobi for short if that takes your fancy, silly work nickname but I like it." I decline to take his hand, this doesn't seem to bother him. He brushes the rebuttal away with a warm laugh. "You like to be called Hal, is that right? I've heard all about you. It's an honour, a real honour."

"I can't say the same," I say, standing to meet this man in the eye.

"No, well, people like me don't get talked about. I'm no one really. Nothing like 'Lord Harry', really, it's an honour, a real honour. I can see why she likes you."

"She?"

"Lovely girl. Pretty, blue eyes, red hair, big shoes... Belinda. Belinda Weaver," he says as if he had forgotten her name. I know then he is lying. I know then this is the boy Connie referred to. No one can forget Belinda Weaver, even if they want to.

"She sent me to come get you, said you'd got lost and needed a hand. That is, unless, you would rather stay here?"


	16. Lions & Tigers & Bears, oh my!

**Chapter 16 – Lions & Tigers & Bears, Oh my!**

_Canto iii: "Which all my senses conquer'd quite, and I_

_Down dropp'd, as one with sudden slumber seiz'd."_

I once told Hal that when I was a little girl I had an imaginary friend. I had never spoken of him to anyone but my mother before. He was called 'No-one Inparticular', because when I was talking to myself Mama would ask if I was speaking to her and I would say, 'No'. 'Who are you talking to then, my love?'. 'Oh, No one,' I would answer, 'No-one inparticular.'

As I became older those childish dreams died, one by one, except No-one. I like to think everyone has someone they talk to when they are most alone, most afraid, or simply most bored. Mine just has a name. After god-knows-how-long locked away in my own head, like some creature's prized china doll, unfortunately No-one now also has a form. He wrapped his arm around me when I want to cry and says, _there, there Linny, I'll look after you. I'll look after both of us_. Sometimes he uses Hal's voice, when he wants to placate me. Sometimes he has my father's voice, when he wants to chastise me. Oftentimes his voice is undefinable, closer to my own, that's the voice I hear when I am hungry. It's a voice that dances above me, just behind me, somewhere in the darkness willing me on. It crawls on the ceiling like a shadow.

I like to think I have always been a rational person. Of course when Alex shuts the door and panic sets in Rational Linny says, _come one now, Linny, keep it together, she's just getting her own back. It's just a storage cupboard. You're not in the pits of Hell. You're not back there, you're in Barry, it's close enough, but it's not quite._ Yet Rational Linny gets drowned out in these moments and so it's the irrational part of my mind which lends its aid. One thing No-one has never been is rational.

In times like this No-one has my Mother's voice. He tells me a story. It happens in the cupboard and for a while I'm gone. He takes me somewhere safe where no one can hurt me.

_Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife, _No-one Inparticular says, wrapping his arm around me as I slump down in the back of the cupboard and hold onto myself. I want to float away on the wind. I want wide open spaces and mountains and air and…"There's no place like home. There's no place like home," I mutter to myself in the dark. No-one rocks me back and forth to help me calm down.

_Then you must go to the City of Emeralds, _No-one_ s_ays

"Where is this city?"

_It is ruled by a Great Wizard I told you of._

"Is he a good man?" I ask anxiously.

_He is a good Wizard. Whether he is a man or not I cannot tell._

"How can I get there?"

_It is a long journey, through a country that is sometimes pleasant and sometimes dark and terrible. However, I will use all the magic arts I know of to keep you from harm._

"Won't you go with me?" I beg my old friend, my only friend.

_No, I cannot do that,_ No-one replies, _but I will give you my kiss, and no one will dare injure a person who has been kissed by the Witch of the North._

Eventually light cracks into the darkness. I have an urge to attack, it sits in me like a poison but I don't. No-one tells me it'll all be okay. A pair of great arms reach for me in the darkness. They lift me into the air. They wrap me up warm and carry me away. I cling to this big warm lion of a man like he is a pillar in a storm.

"Are we going to the Emerald City?" I ask my Lion.

Following behind my big old Lion there's a skinny old scarecrow of a man, with big vacant eyes, a good smile, and a head stuffed with straw.

"I need my shoes," I tell the scarecrow, "They're magic."

"You're right, Alex, somethin' ain't right. Something bad must've happened like. You shouldn't 'ave shut 'er in there though, it was mean."

"I told you, she attacked me!"

"You're a ghost. She can't hurt you."

"Aye, well, she did, so there's that."

"Yeah, and she looks dead capable of it an' all 'Lex."

"Do you actually _remember_ what she did to me? Or has it fallen out of that skull of yours? You were ready to stake her back at the caf." She donks him on the head, "Men, you get whiff of a pretty face and you loose your brains."

"If Oz will not give you any brains you will be no worse off than you are now," I tell the Scarecrow by way of making him feel less bruised. It doesn't work.

"Oh my God, Tom, Can you no see it's an act!" The yapping thing at his side spits.

I reach out from the comforting embrace of my Lion and pat my little Terrier on the head, "Good Toto, there, there, shush your barking now."

"She thinks_ I'm _the DOG!" Toto barks at the Scarecrow. "I give up. I'm living in a madhouse."

Me and the Scarecrow both laugh. Toto is such a funny little creature. Cairn Terriers are a blast to tame. Good for hunting and burrowing, and killing evil witches, but not much else.

My big old Lion rests me on a soft couch and I look at my friends. I feel horribly naked and wind myself up in the sheet my Lion gave me. It smells funny. It smells of death. I look at it and realise it is covered in it. I try and rip it away but the Lion stops me.

Scarecrow jumps in to assist, "Damnit, Alex, go and get her something to wear. I don't want to see that again. It's not right for a lady to go about in the nuddy like that. It's just not right."

"Why me!"

"'Cus you're a girl!"

"Tom, look at me. I chose, for a date, to wear _this._"

"'Nowt wrong with it either, it's dead pretty, like. I told you that before. Just fetch something other than that bloomin' dress will you, please?"

"Aye, well, I wasnae trying to impress _you,_" Toto blushes and then vanishes. I stare at the empty space open mouthed a while until I realise someone else is missing.

"Where's my Woodsman?" I demand.

"Belinda, Miss Weaver, you ain't makin' sense like," The scarecrow says. "What do you need? 'Cus Alex says you know where Hal is and it's real important we find him 'n all cus 'e ain't better yet and, like, we can't getting' no blood for you or nothin' 'cus it ain't how we do things, but a cup of tea, or a sandwich, we can do that."

"He hasn't got a heart," I weep.

"Who's not?"

"My Tin Woodsman. He's gone without me, to get one, hasn't he?" I curl up in a little ball and try and tear this deathly thing off me again. I would rather freeze to death and die of cold than wear it. I succeed and throw it at the Scarecrow and pout, though he has covered his big eyes by now and just stands there like a statue.

"Miss Weaver, I don' mean to be rude or 'nowt but you shouldn't do that. You're a lady. Your body is a secret garden and it ain't for no one to look on unless you given them the key," my scarecrow quotes as if he has heard such guff from a great philosopher. Blindly, he searches the ground with his mitt and picks up the stinking thing. He holds it out to me like it is some special gift, dancing it in front of my eyes like a bauble.

"It smells like death," I tell him, "I shan't wear it."

Curiosity gets the better of my brainless scarecrow then. As Toto appears with a bag and drops it at my feet, he lifts the stinking thing to his nostrils and smells, while I search for something nicer to wear. There is no nice gingham dress to be found but there is a blue and white shirt, which I slip on, some comfortable denim trousers. No magic slippers though.

"I need my magic shoes," I tell Toto, "Go fetch."

"I _reeeeally_ hate this woman, Tom," Toto growls and then goes on the hunt.

"Are you decent Miss Weaver?" my scarecrow asks.

"All present and correct."

He moves to sit beside me but my Lion steps in the way. He growls his most terriblest of growls. With one swipe of his paw he knocked the Scarecrow from his perch onto the floor. He has more courage then he thinks he does, my Lion. Toto returns in a blink and throws my shoes at him. "Oi," she says, "Bad Milo! No hurting Tom!"

My Lion stands to his full height. He is about to launch at poor little Toto! I grab him by his tail until he yelps. My lion's eyes water. "Shame on you! It's bad enough you picking on a man made of straw but then you go picking on...on...why you're nothing but a great big coward!"

I looked at Toto, whose face was fuming. No-one whispers in my ear, _I do believe in Spooks, I do, I do._

Then it starts to return. This is Tom and he is a werewolf. That is Milo and he was too. And here is Alex and Hal had drank her blood and then I'd put her in a toaster.

"I'm sorry," I say, "I had a dream, and you were all in it. It happens sometimes. I'm okay. Really. Milo, this is Tom, he's a friend and we need him," I beg my ragged Lion and then turn to Alex when he is settled.

"I'm sorry, Alex, I didn't mean to be… it's just a lot has happened and well, I'm not good with small spaces."

"Neither am I. Funny that."

"Can we call it even?" I beg.

"Aye, if you tell us where Hal has got himself too. No bullshit neither."

"You said something about the Emerald City?" Tom asks with all sincerity. I realise he thinks it's an actual place.

I raise my eyebrows in surprise, and grit my teeth. "Yes, sorry, not that. Sort of lost my way for a minute, it happens. I meant Hull."

"Hull? You said Hell before," Alex challenges.

"Yes, Hell at this particular moment in time happens to be in Hull."

"Hull. Hell is in Hull? And Hal?" Tom scratches his head in a confused sort of a way.

"If I'm right, a man named Stuart is endeavoring to deliver him to someone they call 'The Collector'. That's where I've been. And trust me, it's Hell. That's what _that_ is about," I point to the dress Tom carries.

"It's vampire blood." Tom says in explanation, "Thought it smelled off. Didn't work it out till now, thought it was just 'er I got a whiff of, but it ain't." He hands the dress to Alex. She holds it like it's an unwashed nappy and then tosses it aside.

"It's not mine. At least not all of it. It's a long story, but don't worry. There's a plan."

I remember the words on the door through which I found exit. They were scrawled there in pen like drunk women scrawl declarations of love on club toilet doors. My mind phases into that place again.

"_Through me you pass into the city of woe,_

_Through me you pass into eternal pain;_

_Through me among the people lost for aye._

_Justice the founder of my fabric mov'd;_

_To rear me was the task of power divine,_

_Supremest wisdom, and primeval love,_

_Before me things create were none, save things_

_Eternal, and eternal I endure,_

_All hope abandon, ye who enter here."_

I only realise I've repeated old Dante's words out loud when Alex interrputs.

_"There was once and old vamp called Harry_

_Who once worked in caf' down in Barry_

_He kept it right clean_

_But the patrons were mean_

_So he decided to commit Hari Kari"_ she giggles, then her face falls. "Sorry. Misjudged the mood again. So, you were going to tell us all about Hell, I'll get the beers in shall I?"


	17. Until Death (or gainful employment)

_Author's interlude: _

_So I just got wind of the start date for S5 so need to ramp this baby up! Chapter a day okay with everyone? I'll try and do it and hopefully will not rush anything. Please let me know in comments/reviews if the writing suffers! _

_In any case this is also a short author's note to say thank you for the support so far. **Seamay** – thank you for your personal comments (everyone go read 'Walking with a Ghost' if you haven't already) and to all my silent readers I see come and pop in, so nice to see a lot of you there, even during hiatus. Thanks for those of you who have come this far with Belinda & co. I hope this continues to please right to the end – and there is an end, this is not a trilogy. In the words of the glorious Paul Daniels (not Phil), "You'll like it, not a lot, but you'll like it". _

_If I'm right this should finish days before Series 5 starts and should buffer very nicely…Challenge? Accepted :D Spon x _

* * *

**Chapter 17: Until Death (or gainful employment)**

_Canto iv: And to a part I come where no light shines_

Alex returns with a soft crunch onto the sofa opposite and throws a beer to Tom. He catches it with a grin. One flies my way. I open it and pass the favour onto Milo. He looks at the frothy mass oozing out of the gift with curiously until I help him put it to his lips.

Tom had been asking about Milo. He seemed concerned about him, as one can suspect he would be given they are of the same kind, but the way I catch Milo looking at Tom occasionally suggests to me that the alpha dog in him isn't keen on being in the same territory as another wolf. "There was a way out and I had to take it," I explain, "I found Milo there. He was stuck. It was difficult at first given that when we first met I apparently, sort of, tried to kill him but since we came out I'm seeing a whole new side. I'm sure he'll be fine after a full moon. Just needs a shock to the system is all it is, I'm sure." I am not sure.

"So! Thick, hot-lump of werewolf aside," Alex interjects, to which Tom looks at her with daggers, "What? You were talking Hull. Talk quickly I have like a reeeally low boredom threshold." She throws another beer at me. It opens with a pleasant squirt which I catch between my lips before it froths over. Damn, that's good! My first beer in this life and it tastes good! So good. I think I knock the whole thing back, the froth skirts out the sides of my mouth like I am some kind of drunken oaf. It spoils my shirt and, you know what, I don't care. That's new.

Tom and Alex look aghast, "Sorry," I say wiping my mouth on a five hundred pound silk sleeve, "thirsty is all."

"Thirsty thirsty?" Tom presses curiously. He wants to know if I'm still on the wagon.

"Actual thirsty, but yes, that too. Though…Look a lot has happened. I'm not...I'll get to that," I say. I don't feel able to launch into the really grimy details about what has happened to me since my Birthday surprise at Honolulu Heights. It hurts too much. I return to Alex's question, "Hull, yes, we'll get to that too, but -"

"I mean, why Hull?!" Alex spits incredulously, "It's…it's…Hull!"

"And this is _Barry Island, _babes. You wouldn't believe the shit that lives here." Suddenly Alex and Tom look horribly offended. "No, no. Christ I didn't mean _you_. Just trust me, the most evil things in the world don't find rest in metropoles and places of outstanding natural beauty. They like to hide. They find the most dull and lifeless places, normally near water, where no one will notice them and then evil just follows. It has its own gravitation field that stuff I swear to all that's holy. Anyway I was going to start with Stuart."

"Stuart, some bloke you claim has whisked Hal off. Likely story," Alex poo-poos, nursing her own beer to be one of us.

Tom looks upon me with deep concern, "Yeah, are you sure, what if he's off -"

"Killing people?" I finish since he seems unable to do so.

Tom shuffles from foot to foot on the sofa, slumps back and buries his tongue in the top of the bottle. I can see how much this boy cares about his friend. With caution, in case either Milo or Alex take umbridge, I stand and sit next to him. Two pairs of eyes follow me with distrust. One set on me. One set on him. I take his hand.

"Thing is, I know Hal wouldn't do that. So do you, don't you? Deep down. But, let's say he was, you wouldn't see him again because he'd know you'd stake him if you did, nor Alex. He'd be long gone, out the country and the old Hal would want you to get on with your lives."

"The old Hal would come back and kill us out of spite."

"You don't know that, Alex," I say. Okay, so maybe I agree, but I'm trying to make Tom feel better.

"He said so, on one of his bad days like," Tom harrumphed.

"Well, he was probably kidding. He's got more sense than that. What's more he knows you can take him. I mean, look at those guns!" I smack him in the upper arm. Tom cracks a smile. Milo bristles. "Look, and I'm being serious now. It if _is_ that then odds are he's more likely to find me first than you are to find him, and I'm here so...where's the bad." Pictures of Hal ripping off Tom's head and me punching Alex's ghostly teeth out are buried in a big smile and a hearty glug of the beer in my hand. It washes them away. "But luckily for all involved, that's not the case, because I'd wager everything I am and ever was that Stuart's with him right now."

Alex interrupts, "So, who is this bloke then? And why would Hal go off with him. And how did he get in the house! And what were you doing sending cocking postcards - Tom got attacked by a rabid postman because of you!" she spits, slopping her beer on the sofa during the process of her wild-armed verbal defecation. "Shit," she reacts, tries to mop up the liquid with her dress, fails, and then puts the beer on the new coffee table, having learned her lesson.

"Okay, so last thing first: What postcards? Secondly; he's very charming, but it would have been here. Connie Simm probably did the leading. She's a ghost and my guess is she's haunting him for a good couple of weeks since I last saw her. And last; his name is Stuart Algernon Leftbridge II? He's…well I suppose, technically speaking, if we're getting down to brass monkeys, he's my husband."

* * *

"So you're dead?" I ask the man leading me through purgatory like he's simply looking for his hotel room.

"I died, yes."

"Recently?"

"Relatively speaking, time here, you know, it all gets a bit muddled."

"And how do you know Belinda?"

"Oh, yes well she killed me of course, but it's okay. Really, I'm super fine with it old chap."

I have stopped dead in the corridor, "She killed you?"

Mr Kobayashi turns smoothly upon his heals. The concrete dust grinds under him here. Its strikes at my ear drums like nails upon a chalk board.

"Yes, she was quite hungry. Caused a little mess, but there it is."

"She's feeding?" She didn't make it after all. It was a little like she had died all over again. I had built up this perfect creation in my memory. In the time since she had been taken from me I had imagined she had overcome herself. That, unlike me, she could live in the world blood free, but, no. Sometimes our dreams fail us.

"She's a vampire, my man. It's what you do."

"I don't, or at least, I didn't for a long time. It's possible not to."

The young man laughs in a pleasant parlor-game way, as if I have just completed a rather excellent charade. It's an empty, practiced laugh that rings of politeness and incredulity. He sidles up to me. He wraps a thin arm around my shoulder, "That's a lovely thought, but we both know better I think. Come on. Not far now."

"What were you, before?" I ask.

"Me? Oh I was No-one," this seems to amuse him in a geniune way, "by which I mean a civil servant. I was a lawyer, like my father was a lawyer, like his father was a lawyer. My father and father's father were legal beavers up at the Circus. I went to Oxford and waited for the recruiters. You know no matter how they try and reach out the common man its still rather old-boys club and such. But I got bored, you know. Wanted to search for that new horizon, that new threat."

"The Circus? You're a spy?"

"For a time, yes I suppose I was. Ran a lot from GCHQ. It's not all it's cracked up to be you know. I'm sure you'll agree that secrets like us are never as glamourous as the creative media like make out. Even Vampires are mundane really. And Spying, well it's not all bombs and birds. It's mostly paperwork, coffee and boring old statistical analysis. But as it happens I was quite good at finding things, so I made a bit of a success of myself. I left. Like most things, it was for a girl, you know how it gets Harry."

"Hal."

"Yes, well, you know how it is. There was this girl you see, and she's a cracker, Hal, really a blinding bit of totty. She lost someone while we were at University, and then everything changed you see. She got lost in this other world. Your world, Hal. And I thought it was my _duty_ to get her out of it."

"Belinda," I inform him, time to play the card that lets him know that I know who he is.

He stops again. This time he doesn't turn. He waits. I wait.

After a moment, "She was a real peach, once," he says into the corridor. Then he starts walking again, shaking off the play like a pro. If I had a heart it would have been racing.

"I got it in my head that I had to know what Belinda knew about, so I went into the data. But it was clean. By which I mean, clean_ed_. I know a clean up job when I see one so I dug a little deeper and then a little deeper. I started to get somewhere when I was head hunted by the chaps in Archive."

"Archive?"

"Yes, that's what I said. Anyway, that job that lasted until you killed her."

"I -"

He turns again. His smile no longer present, that large mouth sits like a languid fleshy slash in his head, "I'm sorry were you going to deny it?"

I shake my head.

"Good, because it would be mostly pointless."

"I'm sorry."

"Oh, boo, you're sorry. I'm over that. Sorry is such a pointless word. I spilled the milk, 'Sorry'. I burned a nation, 'Sorry'. I wiped out international finance, 'Sorry'. I turned your fiancé into a mindless blood-hungry beast...**_'Sorry'_**. It doesn't wash, Harry. Anyway, you're not sorry."

"I'm not?"

"Nope, and you shouldn't be."

"I shouldn't?"

"No. Regret is as pointless as denial. She was always going to get herself killed eventually, but because you turned her she lived and now we're married and that's a beautiful thing. You created something beautiful, Hal. I'm grateful, really, and because of her we might have a chance of doing something really special. I'm a silver linings kind of a guy."

* * *

"Married!" Tom and Alex spit in unison.

"It was all very confusing," I say and reach for Alex's beer, downing it in a swallow, "I'm not sure. I wasn't altogether...with it... at the time."

"But...Oh my God Hal's going to be right devastated Belinda," Tom says sadly. Alex just smiles.

"Anyway he's dead so I don't think it's legal."

"What!" Alex sits up with the surprise.

"Stuart, that is. Yes, that bit I didn't mention yet, I may have inadvertently, accidentally, not-on-purpose, killed him. I think."

Tom bristles in his chair as if he is about to stake me with his bare fists. He pulls his arm out from the back of the sofa, "Where is it?"

"What, this?" I brandish the stake that I had clocked down the back of the sofa and removed. "Best I look after it for everyone's sake, just in case."

"You killed someone?" Alex folds her arms, "I knew it! You couldn't hack it."

"No! Or at least I don't remember. The first clear memory I have after, after," _Dark! Trapped. __Tell them about the Collector. Tell them what he does, go on, tell them what he's going to do to Hal, __"_shh, I'll get to that in a minute..."

Tom's hand, unthreatening, rests on my shoulder, "Belinda you're talking to yourself again, like. Who's the Collector? Is he Stuart?"

"Yes, yes, I mean, no. He's different. I'll get to that. Stuart found me you see. I remember that. He took me out of there but he was already dead, you see so, well anyway he could get me out."

"Out of where?" Alex demands.

"Hull."

"Oh yes, Hull. I forgot fer a second," says Alex layering on the sarcasm like paint.

"Okay, to be specific," I retort, "A storage system, in Hull, underneath an abandoned school on Brunswick Avenue."

"A storage system?" Alex asks.

"A school?" Tom adds.

"Am I talking gibberish again?" I wonder honestly, "because I'm sure that's what I said."

"And that's where this guy Stuart is taking Hal?" Alex asks.

I drop the stake on the table, for anyone's use, though I'd like to see them have a go, Milo will rip their arms off. "I'd bet my life on it," I declare.

Alex stands, "Right then. Thanks for the dead interesting story and all. I'll just go get Hal. You know the way out," she declares and closes her eyes.

The house seems to shake a moment. Alex looks horribly constipated. When she opens her eyes she looks flabberghasted to see the three of us stare at her so. She closes her eyes again. Experiences the same as before, then opens them. I watch in amusement as she flops back on the sofa, lifts her fingers to her nose oddly, there is red ooze coming from it.

"I'm bleeding!"

"You're not bleeding, not really. You're a ghost," says Tom.

"Fuck! I know but look!" she shoves her fingers in my face. There is no appeal. She seems visibly disappointed when I push her spectral offering away.

"You won't be able to get there Alex, not that way, no matter how hard you try. Even if you drove up and knocked on the door, you won't get in" I explain. "Do you know what happens to vampires if they try and get in somewhere they haven't been invited?"

Alex pulls a face, "Err, yeah. I remember the mess." She is wiping her face clean with fascination.

"Well, whatever does that to us isn't limited, you know? It's all over that place like a curse. A vampire tries to get in or out they get barbecued. A ghost tries to get in they get, well eventually babes you'd probably explode into a thousand pieces. Warewolves can get in but it's mostly an internal hemorraging kind of deal on the way out. And the others..."

"Others?"

"Yes, others. Well they aren't even stupid enough to try. Humans however, they can waltz in to their hearts content, many do." I stop for a minute, "they don't leave. But that's because mostly they don't survive what's inside." I reach for the fifth beer and give Tom the last one before continuing.

"Stuart found a loop hole. When he, well, when he died he knew a way to get Milo out. That's the only way in and out you see, for a supernatural, is by a door."

"Like the one I've not frigging got yet?" Alex asks.

"Yes, that kind."

"And you and Stuart?" Tom asks with care.

"We didn't get very far, but I think he knew that would be the case."

"Why?" Tom asked.

I laugh at the absurdity of it all, "Because he wasn't after me, babes. The bastard was after a job."


	18. Never lock horns with a devil

**Chapter 18: Never lock horns with a devil**

_Canto v: "love bereav'd of life"_

It feels as if we have been walking around in great and infinite circles. With every passage the light in the windows becomes dimmer. I see familiar sights but I realise now we have come to almost the darkest part of this place. There are no lights behind the windows on the doors here. There are no shadows upon the floor. It is as if night has fallen in each room. Somewhere I can hear an endless tide turning, a wind rustles the detritus strewn about the ground. It feels as if I have walked into a palace I once owned, to find it looted and decrepit.

Nevertheless, that is not what plays upon my mind in that moment. "Belinda _married _you?" I laugh.

Kobyashi returns to me, "That's funny?"

"You're dead."

"Presently."

"She's a vampire," I remind.

"Mostly."

"It's impossible. Besides, she could not _love_ you," I explain with disdain.

"Why do you say that, are you idiot enough to think she loved _you_? You understand that she had that effect on every man that met her, you imbecile. It took her very little time to work her way into your heart. How long did you know her, exactly?"

"I hated her most of the time, to be honest," we both realised I was skirting the question.

"My guess is you had one night of her company. I knew her for her _entire_ life, Hal We grew up together. I was the first to learn her charms and that, if anything, should mean they are mine to covet."

"You knew her for her entire life and yet my money is on the fact that, out of the two of us, I'd go so far as to say I'm the only one out of the two of us that made love to her. I'd even go so far as to say she has never even kissed you? You can follow my train of thought, right?"

The moment between my sarcasm and his attack upon me is barely conceivable. In a hair's breath he rushes upon me. I defend myself, throwing a square punch upon his jaw which seems to only barely slow him down. He seems paper thin, with no musculature to speak of yet he is nimble and viscous in his manner. He bests me in a few moments, despite my grandest and most passioned efforts. Soon I am upon the hard ground and try to pull myself up but he is on my like a whippet. I am delivered a good number of blows to the stomach, followed by a classic short punch box to the bridge of my nose which sends blood spurting and a pain through my eyeballs which is a horrible reminder that I a may be dead but my nerve endings are very alive. He leans his forearm into my neck. He leans upon me with what felt like the weight of the entire Universe. My chest feels as if it is no more sturdy than ashen paper. The earth and all her elements, the moon, planets, Sun and all his power, press down upon his back, willing him to flatten me. He had begun to glow, dull at first, like a dying moth lamp, blue and poisonous. Now his brightness burns, lighting up the cavities in that dark corridor so that I can see all about me was derelict and rotten.

The paper on the walls curls in upon itself like old autumn leaves, it has rotted green in all corners. Indescribably thorny plants claw their way through doors long since abandoned by their users. They seem to move towards me, dragging themselves across the torn floor, against which Kobyashi holds me, like the tendrils of some spiny animal. The floor is broken, in places, treacherous. How we have progressed this far, unharmed, eludes me.

When I look back to him in horror I see that his eyes were no longer blue. They are a flat, demonic red.

"Wh – what," I croak, barely able to make a sound under his weight, "ha-ve-you-done!"

"What have I done?"

"H – How? It's n-not possib -"

"You think you know everything? Don't you get it? Henry Yorke, holier than thou, over five hundred years on the planet and you think you know everything there is to know? News flash, old bean, I know more about what is really happening in this world than you and your rancid and withered walnut of a brain could even fathom! Do you think we didn't know about you? Hiding in your pitiful shop in South End? Playing House with Leo, was it? And Pearl? Do you think we weren't watching, waiting, hoping you would fuck up? I _gave_ her to you, Hal! Killing you was her _birthday present_ from _me._ I led her to every bit of information she found about you to hunt you out, so she could be done with you, you squalid walking corpse. At her party I was going to tell her everything! I was going to congratulate her on a job well done and I was going to propose. After _years_ of waiting, she would have _finally_ loved me! And you claim you had the audacity to fuck her? You gloat about it like some school yard bully who has raped a prom queen. She wasn't yours to fuck Hal. She wasn't yours to kill. She wasn't yours to turn. She is mine. She always has been. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, Hal!"

His twists me over with Atlean strength and pulls my forearms up so firmly behind my back that I can feel something give way. He holds his knee in the small of my back and leans into me again. I try to turn my head to see him but as I do he places the palm of his hand upon my temple and forces down with all his weight. It feels like a hydraulic piston is trying to drill its way into my brain. With blurred vision, in his glow I see the thorned plants crawl their way towards my eyes. They seem to bleed from the thorns, oozing dark liquid along the floor as they crawl. I can feel them clamber over my feet and ankles and strain to kick them free.

"I should kill you!" he screams at me with such passion. In that moment I expect to die here. It would be a fitting end. I think of the fact that Alex and Tom will never know what became of me and it makes me feel good. I will be alive to them, bad or good, in their memory. That is alive enough. They will talk about me as if I am still in the world, hiding, surviving, killing; it doesn't matter what, at the end of it all. That they will talk as if I have just 'gone out' to a find a new life, will be enough.

But Kobyashi's weight lessens a little. His light dims slowly, reluctantly, "Unfortunately your continued existence is precious to me right now."

He grabs at one of the tendrils from that strange plant and rips it from the ground. The remaining veinery recoils at the tare, as would an animal wounded, it shrinks into the darkness as the light the ghost exudes begins to die. He wraps the barbed coil around my wrists behind me, pulling it taught so it bites down at the flesh there. I wince at the pain of it. There is little to see by now but my eyes can still make out the shapes in the darkness. Kobyashi still emanates some small light, that which spirits naturally exude. It is enough to see him by. He grasps my collar and pulls me too my feet. "I had hoped to take you through this place quietly. I thought there was no need to make a fuss. It's not wise to draw attention to yourself here, Hal."

"It was you who attacked me, sir," I respond as calmly as I can through the pain that seems to filter through every fibre of me from his onslaught.

"Only physically speaking. Metaphysically you started this years ago. Come on," he adds with tiredness, "it's not far now. Just a few more laps."

"No," I insisted. "I'm going back. You're not taking me to Belinda, not like this. She wouldn't want this. This isn't her doing. You're a liar, and worse, a demon it seems. I'll try my chances in limbo." I feel my way backwards in the dark slowly, retracing my steps where I can.

"There's no going back, Hal. Only forward," Kobyashi insists, "You don't know the way. Terrible things await those that don't have a guide, Hal."

"I suspect that they can be no worse than enduring your company though, can they?"

"Funny, old chap. Fine!" He grabs my shirt, pulls me back to where I was and puts his hands on my belt.

"What in the blazes do you think you're doing? Unhand me this instant!"

"Oh please shut up, I don't swing that way." He removes my belt with a whip, loops it about my forearm and pulls it tight, fashioning a crude form of leash. "I have to be in front to see the way. Goodness knows what trouble I'd get into if you fell into a void. Come on!" He walks ahead pulling my belt, and me along behind him.

This isn't Hell, but I'll admit it feels like that mythical land encloses upon us with every beleaguered step.


	19. The Plan

**Chapter 19 : The Plan**

_Canto vi: "poisonous drug of hell _

_Be to their lips assigned"_

"So where did yer end up like?" Tom asks of me eagerly, sitting forward in his chair with a squeak, "Belinda?"

I have become distracted, dizzy again. I hold my hand to my head where I notice it has started shaking. Looking up, almost obsessively, I am convinced that there is something on the ceiling. _Leave_, say the shadows, _you don't need them, why are you wasting your time? You don't even need Hal. Why waste your neck for him? You're out! You're free! You're hungry. Go and enjoy it. Take it all. _"No, I need them. I need Hal." I say, to No-one Inparticular.

"She's off wi' the fairies again!" Alex sighs.

"I'm fine, it's just," there's no point denying it, "I'm hungry. Things get more confused when that happens." I need to press on. Tell them what I can before I no longer feel disposed to do so.

"I'll make you a sandwich," Tom pulls himself to his feet. "We 'ave some spam in the fridge," he says mechanically.

I pull him to sitting, "I'm sorry, Tom, but you know what I mean. It'll pass, but it will be back. It's okay, really, for now."

He sits beside me again and, seeing my hand, takes hold of it softly to steady the tremors. He is such a gentle, good, man. Milo's arm juts before me, trying to push Tom off me. Tom lets go and puts both hands up in supplication, moving back until Milo calms.

"Hal's been doin' really well you know," he says when the tension has melted. His words are encouraging, "it just takes control is all. Will power. You can do it."

I laugh softly, "I think you may have realised, I am finding it hard to control anything. I can barely maintain my focus for five minutes." The shivers have transferred to my shoulder, down my spine and to my knee. My leg judders upon the floor, tapping out a rhythmical beat. I try to hold it in place. "What will happen if this sensation comes when I have not got my wits about me? I can't think of it." _It will be beautiful._

They are all silent, understanding my dilemma. I want to keep my promise to Hal, to myself, but it is going to be impossible for me now. In the real world, without Hal to help me, or someone, anyone to hold me back who understands. Stuart isn't likely to hold me back; it's simply not on his agenda. "I'm scared. I might kill a lot of people, Tom, without him."

"Hal?"

I nod.

Alex chimes in, "So look, are ye bonkers because you're a vampire, or because of what's happened to ye?"

I look up. I nod, "Both. Mostly the latter."

Alex is getting it, "And whatever it is, Is this guy Stuart going to do the same to Hal?"

"Not him personally, but yes I fear Hal heads towards a similar fate."

Alex understands, "Tom, Hal's hardly all there right now. If she's telling the truth he won' come back from tha' kind of crazy. We'll loose him. For good."

"I'll get him out before that, I promise," I say.

"And so how? If this place is so fucking impenetrable, eh! Wha' makes you so special?" Alex is clearly worried for her friend, I shouldn't react, but I do. "Let's just go. She's told us where it is. We don't need her."

"Do you think I _want_ to go back?" I snap, fangs bared, "You think it's going to be easy? You have no idea."

"Oh, just go back to your nest or whatever life you made for yourself with this hubby of yours why don't you Thanks for the info, buuut we can take it from here. Alrigh'?"

I snap, patience isn't one of my virtues when I am hungry. "Do you even know what happened to me after you locked me in that van? Did you even hazard a guess why I wasn't there when you came to look for me? I bet you thought I left of my own accord. No. No, the minute you took me out of this house I was fair game to them, you stupid cow. They needed an in, and they got one. They got me. They must have really congratulated themselves when they found me. They took me, they drugged me and they delivered me to the Collection like a fucking Christmas gift!

I was locked in a dark, trapped in my own head for longer than I can ever know, dreaming that fire would burn me to cinders, terrified that I would have to live out eternity, forgotten, alone. Starving like you cannot ever comprehend! No food, let alone even a drop of blood. Do you think I didn't dream of just one drop of water! The madness driven into me staring at the condensation forming on the ceiling of this place they shut me away in, watching it drip, feeling it hit my cheek and being unable to reach it! I can't ever make anyone understand. There are no words for how that feels, just facts. It was hell, fact.

And then one day, one day _he_ came for me, this…I don't know what he is, but he terrifies me. I couldn't move. I couldn't fight it. I couldn't do anything."

I roll up my sleeve and show them the scars. There are track marks up and down my arms.

"Do you know what it takes to scar a vampire?" I sneer, "No? How about another question? Do you know vampires don't make new blood? We just recycle what we have. And do you know how much blood we need in our system to survive? The answer is not – one – drop. He can take it all. All of it, and we just survive. We don't make more but we don't die. Not until we feed. So he just keeps us, collects, feeds us when he's thirsty and then takes a deposit again." I hide the scars, perhaps they will fade in time. Perhaps not.

"It doesn't take long to make a vampire mad in those circumstances. Not long at all."

Alex sits down on the sofa with all the weight deflated from her. She stares at me. I think I even see pity in her eyes.

I realise I am crying. It's uncontrollable. Fangs gone. Pride gone. Courage gone. I'm just an abused little girl who wants the monsters under the bed to no longer be real. No one holds me. Not even Milo. I don't think any of them know how to react. Hal would hold me, if he was here.

"It's a fucking miracle that I can even string a sentence together after that and you think I _want _to go back! I don't want to, I _have _to. I can't let that happen to Hal. I just can't."

It's Alex who makes a move. She pushes the boys away and holds me. And I just cry.

"I'm sorry," she says. I think she is crying too, "I'm just really sorry."

"We need a full moon to get Milo straight" I say eventually, "I can't do it alone." I wipe my face clear and try and to put on my brave old Belinda face again. "We have to save Hal and destroy the Collection, free the rest of them, there are humans there too. It has to end. Milo and Tom can walk in but won't be able to get out till we gave destroyed the building. Alex, we have to go the hard way."

"Whatever it takes," Alex insists.

I shake my head, "There's only one way I can think to do it. It won't be easy. Have you learned how to possess people yet?" I ask.

Alex, horrified, shakes her head. "I can do that?" she asks with surprise. I nod.

"How long until the full moon," I ask Tom.

"Just less than a week."

I return to Alex, "You have at least till then to learn. And I'm sorry, but my urge to feed is only going to get worse. Until then you need to help me stay dry, and no cupboards, I beg you. It will only make it worse."

It seems to have become darker, I am not sure what time it is but I am certain it should not be this dark. "Is it winter?" I ask. The clock on the wall says midday, "Never mind." I know then hat I have little time. Especially when I find myself staring at the door. So I begin. I explain the plan, beginning to end. Everything I can. They don't interrupt. I explain that Milo knows how to get Tom in and so when he is in a state to explain we will have a shot. Milo and Tom are to get the humans out. Alex is to go for Hal. I'll take care of Stuart and the Collector if I can. I explain what Alex is going to have to do, or, most importantly what she is to stop me from doing. Tom tries to write everything down as quickly as he can. He reads back his notes and I correct him until they have it all.

Alex and Tom argue with me for a good ten minutes, but there is no other way, no other way I can think of. I admit it's not perfect. It might not work. But it's the best I can come up with.

Something drips onto my leg from the ceiling. It is blood, thick, wet and warm. I try not to look at it. I don't look up. _Keep focussed, Linny, just for a bit_. We decide what to do with me. We take Milo to the basement as he's not going to let it happen unless he's kept away from me. Then, while Tom goes to fetch Hal's chair, Alex confides in me "I cannae do it!" she insists.

"You have to," I say, "unless you can come up with a better idea? Trust me, babes, I'm totally willing to listen to an alternative."

"I don't know, this is so big, you know." Her bravery gets the better of her. "Will Hal last a week?" she asks.

I shake my head, "I don't know, but we still have to try. There's something on your neck." I explain absently, a great gash has appeared there and the urge to jump her is incredible. Rationally I know she is a ghost. I know it is not there. But I'm not thinking rationally now. "Is it just me or is it getting dark?"

"No," Alex says, rolling her eyes, "It's just you, Barmy."

I look up. The shadows on the ceiling have gathered. Pendulous, dark clouds hang above us both, fit to burst. Something falls, slowly, just a little drop. It splashes on the coffee table. A little red spot. Then another. It lands on the leather, white sofa with a splat, and rolls slowly down. "Alex, get Tom," I warn.

"Toooooooooooooom!"

Then it falls in a great torrent, the heavens open inside the little B&B, dousing every surface in blood like rain. It is deafening. I put my hands over my ears. "Stop it! Stop it!" I tell my brain. My brain doesn't listen. It is trying to drive me outside, out there, where I know what will happen.

_Leave!_

"Belinda, you're imagining it, there's nothing there. Whatever it is. Just concentrate, please," begs Alex.

_Get out!_

"I can't stay here," I say as I stand. Alex tries to force me back. "Get off!" I yell and knock her away.

I am heading to the door, trying to cover myself from the storm raging around me.

Alex appears in front of me, "You cannae leave, Belinda, we agreed tha'. You have te stay here, it that's okay wi'you?" she speaks to me like I'm some form of child.

"Get out of my way."

"Er, no."

"Get the fuck out of my way, Alex!" I threaten, letting the monster out to play.

"Still no," Alex chirrups with a smile, "Sorry, Belinda, but this bit I think I'm gonna enjoy a little."

It's at that point Tom tackles me and everything goes dark.


	20. I would never die for my beliefs

**Chapter 20: I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong**

_Canto vii: "Av'rice dominion absolute maintains"_

I am tiring. It cannot be for days that we have been walking but, for my limbs, it feels as much. I am not sure if there is some poison in me, from the barbs with which Kobyashi has restrained me, or whether it is this place, or whether it is because I am simply exhausted. Each step feels as if it takes all my strength to lift and set down. The darkness is solidifying. I can see barely a few feet before me, and then only see the recurring wall of my companion's grey back. We have not spoken since our tussle.

"May we stop? Just for a moment," I ask eventually

"Nearly there," my forerunner insists, "Not a good idea to stop here, Hal, here be dragons, if you get my drift."

"Just a moment, please," I say but I have already fallen to my knees. I feel strangely sea-sick. I have never liked boats at the best of times; in the darkness of this place I feel like we are in a squall.

"Fine, okay," Kobyashi concedes after failing to leverage my dead weight up from the damp floor. There upon I have found a fair inch of water. It is ice cold and swashes about my knees He lets go of my belt and searches about us in the darkness with caution. "We probably have a few minutes and I'll be honest I'm dying for a cigarette."

He reaches into his inside pocket and retrieves a silver cigarette case, "Want one?" I shake my head. "It won't kill you, you know?"

"I gave up. I have an addictive personality, it's bad for my conditi - wait? How can you smoke!?" Ghosts can no more smoke than they can drink or eat or touch. I am not sure what he has done to himself but clearly there is something demonic going on. I hate demons, they always like to break the rules, never have been a predictable species.

"Oh, the world is full of wonders, Hal. You don't know half of it. It's funny what one will do to be corporeal when one has a marriage to consumate!"

I try to put the image out of my brain. "You can't be corporeal, you're a ghost!"

"I beg to differ, old man. The game has changed a lot since you went to play hide & go seek in South End. I met someone who has taught me a few things." He takes a pleasurable breath on his cigarette and blows his smoke in my face. "You have until the end of Mr Marlborough here, Hal, or we'll be late for dinner. The Collector hates people who are late for dinner."

"Who?" I struggle. My legs are pounding with pins and needles. My arms have gone completely numb. I am barely listening to Kobyashi. He shakes me, "Hal, stay with me old bean, I need you in one piece."

"You were ready to kill me earlier."

"Trust me, if my plan had worked I would have killed you by now but, Mr Yorke, I made a deal. Her for you, do you understand?"

I shake my head.

"The Collector has a thing for Vampires, bit of an obsessive, so to speak. I knew he would have heard about you. I knew he would want you. I tried to get her out, get her safe, but we couldn't get out you see. So I made a deal. Connie was just warming you up for me, you see? You were my Plan B."

"Plan B?" I laugh, so that was what she meant all the time.

"If I couldn't get Linny out you were my ace in the hole. I told him I could bring you to him, but only if he let Linny go. Do you understand, Hal? Are you with me? I can't get Belinda out safely without you?"

"You're lying, about everything," I insist, I can tell a liar. "Belinda is fine. She's been corresponding, sending postcards."

"Postcards?!" for the first time I seem to know something Mr Kobyashi did not.

"Yes, dozens, apparently, though I have only seen the one."

"That's impossible."

"Check my pocket."

"What?"

"My pocket. It was in my hand, when I came through. I put it in my pocket."

He slots his cigarette between his teeth and dives into my trouser pocket, pulling out from within the piece of cardboard Alex had posted to me what seemed to be an age ago.

"This isn't from Belinda! You can't know that."

"It's her blood."

"That means nothing."

"It's her _blood_."

Mr Kobyashi laughs and keeps the postcard, "Hal, I hate to break it to you my friend, but Belinda's blood is hardly her exclusive property any more."

"What on earth do you mean?"

He takes a long huff on his cigarette and then holds the stub to the corner, blowing on it subtly. The card catches light. So, he has breath too? All those ghostly abilities and yet here he is producing air, inhaling smoke. I smile as the card falls to the floor, curling into a ball of cinders.

"What are you so amused about?" he asks bitterly.

"Nothing."

If he's corporeal, I can kill him.

"I think I am well enough to carry on," I say, though my limbs still ache and my stomach churns, I feel a sudden zeal to push forward.

"One more circle, Hal, and then we never have to see each other again," Kobyashi promises, he grabs hold of my belt and pulls me to my feet.

"Works for me."

We press on.

* * *

_Canto vii: Betok'ning rage. They with their hands alone_

_Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet,_

_Cutting each other piecemeal with their fangs_

Alex and Tom have been arguing for two days. It's getting tired. If they are going to stake me, 'put me out of my misery,' as Alex humanely put it, then they should just go ahead and do it. It would help if Alex could make up her mind but she changes it as often as I used to change my outfit.

"No, we need her, you're right, but there has te be a better way. I'm no convinced."

"You can do it, Alex!"

"No, I tried, an' I can't.

"She's right, she can't!" I add from the lounge. "Botched it every go, haven't you babes!"

Tom sticks his head through the kitchen portal.

"Belinda, you're not helping," he disappears, then returns, "How are you feelin' this morning, can I get you owt like?"

"Like I would like to skin you alive, Tom, and make you into a nice coat. Cup of tea?"

He vanishes again with a disappointed look, and returns to arguing with Alex, this time about which is better, knocking me out or gagging me, the next time I make a racket. It feels like they are having the conversation for the thousandth time, and then I remind myself, they are used to this by now. It is probably normality for them. Then again, Hal doesn't have a set of lungs like mine and I'm certain last night I woke all of Barry with my screaming.

"What's worse, she set bloody Milo off, did y'hear that racket! I had te give him an old ball to shut him up!" Alex adds

Trust me, the irony of the situation is not lost on me. When I first arrived at Honolulu Heights on my Birthday and found Hal where I sit now I found the situation hilarious. Now I get it. I really _get _it. I curse sober me for even suggesting this get up. It's uncomfortable, humiliating, and massively inconvenient. I know in their worse moments they look at me and are disappointed I'm not their friend. I know that they wonder if this is their life now. I know I have earned no loyalty from either of them and that if it weren't for my necessity to the plan I would be dust already. I know all this, and I don't care. They seem small to me right now. A hinderence, like a burst tyre on the way to an adventure. They can't stop me. I escaped from Hell and they think they can hold _me _ back.

Tom huffs out of the kitchen with a warm mug of something in the 'world's greatest dad' mug. I laugh. Last time I saw that I was drinking my Father's blood out of it. I hope they didn't give it a good wash.

"Got loads of weird 'erbal tea from Annie, Orange 'n Mango okay?"

"Yes, just what I need, Luke warm fruit water, no thanks."

"It's lovely," Tom says and holds the straw to my lips. I suck, reluctantly.

"Now, where did we get to?" he asks grabbing one of the pile of magazines he brought from the corner shop.

"Grazia, page 56, Winter Warmers," I indicate.

"Oh."

It' the page on how Fur is making a come back. There are half naked women wrapped in dead animals, strutting down catwalks. I knew it would get a rise out of him. He paws over the pages with a mournful look.

I lean closer, whisper. "Your skin would look really good on me, Tom, I swear I'd do you justice. With my skin tone. The compliments I'd get."

"That's not you talkin', Miss Weaver, so I ain't listenin'. P'rhaps that story abaat the girl what fell in love with her gardener bloke. Which one was that in?" He flusters through the magazines with panic.

Alex glides in, looking proud, "I've got it!" she announces.

Tom turns back, "What?"

"A better plan than hers."

"No you haven't," I insist bitterly.

"Have!"

"Haven't."

"Have!"

There's a metallic clap and a pile of letters land on the doorstep. Neither of them move.

"No you haven't," I remind. "Harper's Bazaar, page 45," I tell Tom.

Alex sighs audibly, "I'll get that then _shall I _. Leave you two girls to it!"

She stops to the door in her heavy boots and snatches the post from where it fell. She whips through it with a recalcitrant sigh at every move, then stops, "Tom?"

Tom reads with laboured pauses, the intention is to keep my mind from wandering and it has worked well enough so far. It was only last night that the hallucinations really got the better of me.

"Tom?"

"S'cuse me, Miss Weaver?" Tom continues to be polite. It's pointless. He goes to Alex and they both conspire over the recent delivery as I try again to disengage myself from their restraints.

"It's from the Barry Grand," Alex points out.

I laugh, "Barry Grand? Sounds like a washed up seventies comedian. 'Ladies and Gentleman, welcome the Captain of All Comedy! He's a Devil of a Drollster, Mr _Barry_ _Grand_!" the amusement keep me occupied for a moment. I feign applause using the arms of the chair.

"Postmark two days ago. They can't be from her. It just _can't_ be."

"Go and check?" Tom encourages Alex with a nudge.

"And leave you here so she can persuade you te let her loose! Not on your nelly, mate! You go check!"

"And leave _you_ here to stake her for looking at you funny like? No. You go."

"Will you two just fuck each other and get it over with, please, listening to you is worse torture than anything my brain can come up with," They both look at me as though I have insinuated they commit genocide. They stare at me a moment in open-mouthed horror that I could have suggested such a thing. "I threaten to make you into a coat, Tom; I tell you when I'm loose that I'll seduce, vampirise and then stake your brothers, Alex; and neither of you bat an eyelid. I suggest you screw each other and _that_ gets a reaction. And you think I'm the one with a screw loose."

"Let's go together," Alex concludes. I smile, left to my own devices for long enough I am sure to get loose.

"I'll get the knock out juice," Tom says to Alex.

"I'll get the needle," Alex agrees.

I throw my head back in rage.

* * *

Kobyashi's pace has quickened and my legs can barely take it. The floor is uneven now. I keep tripping but he doesn't slow. It seems he is as eager to exit purgatory now as I am. The floor crackles underfoot and snaps, I cannot see where we are but it is as if we have come upon a forest of dead trees, that shed their branches like leaves. My limbs pulse with lactic acid. The tips of my fingers tingle as I stumble face first into a pile of sticks.

"For fuck sake, Hal, is it too much to ask that you keep up," Kobyashi swears. I don't answer.

When I look up I can see something in the distance. It is a door. How I can see a door in this tar-like darkness is beyond me, but it is as if it glows. It is like a beacon: Vermillion red, perfect, uncorrupted by its surroundings. It seems freshly painted. As we approach I begin to see it is guarded.

I stop. I plant my legs as firmly as I can in the sticks about my ankles. I root deep. I am a tree, I will not be cut down. I am not stopping because I am brave, or because I am somehow protesting my situation. I stop because I am terrified. I literally cannot move.

I have realised I have been a complete idiot.

There was a reason I, like any other Old One, could bear the onslaught of a religious symbols. It is not what the priests did to me all those years ago. It is not because of Snow, or because, as I once thought, that I am such a powerful Vampire that I have transcended such things. It is because I no longer believed in them. I once believed that those totems had power over me. When the priests locked me away for all those months I prayed to the only thing I thought would save me, back then. If surmised that if God had forsaken my bones, if I had no soul, then perhaps his fallen Angels would whisk me to freedom. They did not. The Devil and all his forces did not rescue me. I laughed when I remained. At that point I gave up all hope in any kind of deity, in heaven, hell, and all the dogma between. No one saved me but myself. There was no God, Gods, Heaven, Devil, or Hell. Vampires were simply a superior species. Werewolves an infection. Ghosts an echo. Demons were humans passed into corruption. There was a rational explanation to everything. I was better than the fools who believed other wise.

Seeing that door, I am terrified, because I realise that I was wrong.

* * *

_Author's note: I'll be taking a 2 day break but will be back with the last part's of Part 2 this week. Hope you're enjoying so far. Please leave a review so I know what you think :D To quote non-canonical 'Feedback is love' ..._

_( ps River Styx, geddit? Geddit?... I'll get my coat)_

_Spon x_

\/


	21. Slightly nicer than Knutsford

**Chapter 21: Slightly nicer than Knutsford**

_Canto viii: "Now art thou arrived, fell soul?"_

Kobyashi stomps towards me, grabs me by the neck and tries to pull me forth. "Seriously, if you think it's bad in there then you clearly have no idea what is out here. Come on, old chap, it won't be that bad."

I shake him free. I shall not be moved!

"Me for her, right?" I ask, pulling away against his grasps at my belt and tugs forward. Every pull sends a stabbing pain to my fingers, but I will endure.

"Yes," he sighs with exasperation, "that was the deal."

"She's in there?" I ask, nodding at the ominous red door in the darkness; for reasons I cannot quite fathom I am certain she is not. Then again, trust has never come easy for me.

"Yes. Come _on_!"

I look at Kobyashi with incredulity, "And she _married you?"_

"It was quick. I had to improvise."

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

"Why _everything:_ why was she there when she was meant to be out there? Why did you know? Why did you make a deal? Most importantly, why on earth did she marry you?"

"You're seriously asking me this, now?"

"I'm asking you this, now."

"There was a job," Kobyashi begins with exasperation, "My superior at the Archive, this man called Rook, called me to his office one day. He insisted I take the job. He is a very, very persuasive man. He said I had the perfect skills. They needed to find something and 'I was the best'. I would take the job, he said. No one says 'no' to Mr Rook." For the first time Kobayashi seems afraid. "I said no." His poker face faltered. I wonder what kind of task would terrify this man, he had seemed fearless.

"What was the job?"

"Firstly, they wanted me to work with the Collector. They needed an inside man to get information. There was a legal position coming up, even the worst creatures in the world need legal representation! Hence my nickname. Rook told me to attend the interview, get the job and find out what they needed to know. I declined because it meant..."

"You would change."

"Yes, it meant..."

"Giving up on a human life."

"Yes, it meant..."

"Giving up on Belinda?"

"Do you want me to tell you this or do you know it already?" I decline to answer. Kobyashi continues, "I said no. I went about my life. Then you, Mr Yorke, took it upon yourself to kill the woman I love."

"I turned her into a vampire," I respond sarcastically; though, yes, technically that had not been my _intent_.

"I'm sorry, I thought it was much the same thing. The point being, I told you that you were being watched. When my associates went to clear up your mess they got more than they expected. They got Linny."

"And leverage?"

"Oh, they knew if they passed her on to the Collector that I would follow. I would have to take the job. My supervisor called me into his office again; calmly, and with his usual intent, he told me what they had done with 'Belinda Weaver's body'. Of course, I took the job immediately. I went to the interview. I got hired. I did my job, and then I used my time there to find her and get her out, but it didn't take me long to recognise I could not do it alone, so, I got help."

"Connie?"

"Others too. I came up with a plan. I thought it was fool proof, but I was wrong. Sometimes people get things wrong. Sometimes even people like me can be foolish, Hal."

My eyes have not left the door before me. The pit of my stomach and the hairs standing to attention upon the back of my neck remind me that I know just how wrong sometimes people can be.

"So when the Collector worked out what I was doing I had to think fast. I told him that I had worked out a flaw in the security system, and that I was testing it. I'm smart, Hal...the Collector is much smarter. He realised that Linny was important to me, worked out that I took the job to get her out and, you know what? He was impressed! He said I could keep her, if I brought him something he'd been after for a while. He told me he wanted an Old One and he had heard there were only a few left. I said I knew of one, you, and he said if I brought you to the Collection then I could have Linny. Then he...promoted me, if you can call it that."

He was being euphemistic, he clearly meant that as a gift he was given whatever corporeality he now possesses I cannot fathom how, "That doesn't explain a marriage? You can't get married in Hell!"

"Is that where you think _that_ is?" He laughs, "It's not Hell, Hal," he reassures, though I find it hard to trust him.

"It's not?"

"Not _literally_ speaking, but Hell _does_ exist. We would have to go a lot deeper than where we are to get there. But it's close. It's very close. Can't you feel it? It'll come up to meet us and take us deeper if we stay here too long. Or, we can keep going if you would rather?"

"But the Devil, he…" I am talking to myself now, thinking of all those years ago when I lost any kind of faith. I shake my head. I no longer know what to believe, "he didn't listen."

"Oh, he's been on holiday. Sort of. I think you know. And that's half the problem. Guess who it is my bosses wanted me to find?" He smiles, knowingly. I have a sinking feeling that he has been exceptionally efficient at his job. Suddenly I see him in a different light.

"Where?"

"You're better off _here_, trust me."

"And, where _is_ here exactly?" I snap.

"Imagine it's like a service station, old chap. Somewhere to stop off for a pasty and a wank on the way to the big house...the demonic equivalent of Knutsford Services; in fact, it's slightly nicer."

"You're not lying are you?" I can tell a liar, this man gave up lying to me the minute we fought. I know that now. There is no point for him to lie. "I just don't understand why she would marry you."

Kobayashi sighed, "If I tell you will you come with me?"

I hesitate, I nod.

"Linny was out of it, half herself, less than that. Being there, in that place, it has changed her, Hal," he says sadly, I can't imagine what would change someone like Belinda Weaver. I made her a vampire and it had barely even knocked her from her stride. "I saved her, made a deal, but they still took her away from me. The Collector needed a bargaining chip, after all, to make sure I kept to my end of the deal. But, you know Linny, she attacked the men who were taking her and ran off. The Collector sent me after her. He told me if she tried to escape she would turn to ash, our deal would be done, and so would my entire existence. He promised me a one way ticket straight down into the furthest pits of this place. I went after her. She was heading to the humans, he keeps a bunch. She made her way there and had clawed her way in hungrily before I had stopped her. Killed two. The humans had all been taken weeks before, what was left of a wedding party. When I found Linny she had killed the bride. She was wearing her dress. 'Don't I look pretty, Stuart,' she said. 'Don't you love me, Stuart.' She was teasing me like I was a child. I had just saved her from a pit! I had given my soul away! My life, for her! And she was teasing me."

"Your name is Stuart?"

He rolls his eyes, "Stuart Algenon Leftbridge... the second, to be precise, Hal. Anyway, I don't know how but somewhere along the journey she had got hold of a chunk of wood, she snapped it and held it to her chest. She said, "I'm a monster, Stuart, and you still love me. I should die." Noble, yes, but stupid. Probably half the reason I love her. I panicked. I begged her. I got down on my knees and I pleaded with her not to take her own life." Stuart, or Kobyashi, or whatever his name is, hangs his head, his voice quietens to a well-spoken hum. "She said 'what's the point in being alive if I'm out there and Hal's in here.' "

"She said what?!"

"Don't make me repeat myself, Hal, you know what I said! She made me promise. She said if I loved her that much then 'fine'; she would be mine; she would marry me and I could do whatever the hell I liked, but - and here's the kicker - I was to leave _you_ out of it. Do you see what she was doing, Hal? She was giving me a choice, between being with her, the woman I have loved, completely and utterly, since I was a boy, or betraying a promise to one of the most dangerous demons to have ever existed!" He shakes his head, "Classic Belinda, just classic. I mean, _you've_ met her. It's no competition really! I called her bluff, I said, 'if you mean it let's do it, here and now'. So we did. There. Then. The humans witnessed it, the vicar did his job, and then I took her back to the Collector like a willing lamb. When we got back to him she said, 'Hello babes, thought I might stay a while longer, if that's okay with you.'" He laughs. I don't.

"But _I'm here_," I said with surprise, "If you promised Belinda why in the name of all that is holy am I still here?"

"Do I strike you as someone who keeps a promise, Hal? I'm not stupid! _This way_ I get to have my cake, _and_ eat it. Linny has completely lost her mind, old bean, she won't know the difference between me rescuing her a second time _successfully_, and me negotiating her freedom by giving the Collector _exactly_ what he wants. I'll know though, that's all that matters. I'll know that the one man standing between me and my happiness is tucked away in a nice little corner, never to bother us again. And if Linny every recovers her mind, gets curious and thinks to pay a visit to your old friends, she will find that you gave up on your pointless bid for sobriety and ran off into the dark to rape and pillage, or whatever it is you vampires do. That's if I haven't been able to get rid of your friends so they can never tell her otherwise."

I stare at this man in horror and, I will admit, admiration. "That is truly evil," I tell him.

"Thank you. Coming from you I take that as quite a spectacular compliment! I really do admire you Mr Yorke. If you hadn't killed Linny, we might have even been friends at some point." He claps me on the shoulder in a friendly sort of way and then gives me another firm pull. This time I follow, unable to protest any further and too stunned at the nature of this man to remain steadfast any longer.


	22. Someone else's shoes

**Chapter 22: Someone else's shoes**

_Canto xi: " we passed _

_Between the torments and high parapets"_

With 2000mg of Ketamine in my system memories swim around in my head like curdled soup, all lumpy, with unexpected carrots in the bagging area.

I am following a man who claims to be a doctor. He is tall, wide shouldered, slim waited. His glasses are of a late fifties style, his hair swept back with pomade. He stinks of disinfectant. I hate this man. I hate everything he stands for. I hate that he enjoys his job, but I follow him willingly. Normally, when they take me to be 'processed' I am drugged, unable to fight. This time I have my wits, but I don't fight, I practically dance beside him, skipping with joy. He finds it amusing, and tells me so.

Stuart has promised to leave Hal alone. The Collector has fallen for his games. And they have _both_ sent me off with this man to be put away somewhere safe until Stuart returns with Hal, which, of course, he will do. I am not daft enough to think he will keep his promise. I know him too well.

_They are both idiots. _

I have blood in my system! I have tasted freedom! I am not going to go quietly into the dark.

When my senses began to return after the werewolf dragged me out of the hole in which I had been kept, and importantly, after I had _fed_, I had realised I had two choices before me.

1) "life" with Stuart.

2) "life" with the Collector.

Neither could be called living and I was not going to settle for either. Death was a better choice, but escape was smarter. So I quickly decided to dupe Stuart into thinking he'd won, of the two men he was the most likely to fall for it. My charms don't work on the Collector, there is only one thing he wants from me.

I make my way to the Collector's latest haul of humans, knowing well from my last 'feeding' where they had come from. They cower. I threaten, I tell them what I want them to do. I take the fouled dress from the already dead bride amongst them, several have lost their lives through starvation (the Collector does not treat his stock well). And when Stuart finds me I put my plan into action. Stuart's love-addled brain taken care of, it is just a matter of time before I would be 'processed'. I didn't realise it would be so soon! I'm grateful to Stu, really, I am, he showed me a way out.

The doctor leads me to his surgery. He turns back for barely a second and I strike. I enjoy every minute of killing him. I take out all my rage, all the anger for every draining, every human life that has been taken so that the Collector gets his fix, every vampire cruelly tortured. He is a messy bloody heap by the time I have done. But I don't drink. I'm not stupid enough to go near his blood. I wait for his door. Unsure where it will take me, but aware it is my only option.

His ghost appears not long after I kill him, but instead of running for his door he runs towards a room in the corner of his lab. I follow him, desperately, not wanting to miss my only opportunity for an exit. When I find him he is trying to protect his hoard, as if my intent is somehow rebellion rather than self preservation. It amuses me that even though he is dead he intends to continue his work. Then I see what he is protecting, shelf upon shelf of bottles, deep crimson and cold.

By the time the doctor's door appears I have devastated the lot! If I am leaving I am not going quietly! I take every bottle and heave them at him like great vermillion petrol bombs. The smash and splatter, spreading vampire blood about the room like bitter paint. The doctor dodges and dives each wave of destruction but I manage to keep him in one place, I bar the door and he is too green to know how to disappear, until I am done. I stand amongst the destruction, proud. As I step through the Doctor's door, taking his ghost with me to deprive my jailer of his minion for good, I blow him a kiss. I only hope I have been able to act quickly enough to get to Hal!

* * *

When I wake, I see three faces.

The first seems wide-eyed and worried. The second is pointed and pissed off. The third is stern and square-jawed. They seem wild to me, their features play about their faces as if chasing one another furiously.

'Where am I?' I say dizzily. I'm not certain it comes out like that.

"What was that, Belinda? Can't quite understand you like," says the first.

"I think you gave her too much?" insists the last. His voice seems to work independently from his mouth as it swims around his dark face

The second looks at an empty bottle in her hand, "Well, we've run out now so I suppose maybes I did? Funny though. I mean, drool much?" she laughs.

"It's not funny, Alex."

"It is a _bit_," she retorts. I feel like I want to vomit. The world is spinning and my body feels like air, spread thin in the vortex. I attempt to tell them as much but it just comes out as vowels. Tom (I think the first one is Tom, I can't quite focus enough) puts his hand on my shoulder to steady my attempts. I snarl at him, the monster blackens within me and will not go away. She lingers, hungry, and I cannot keep her down. I feel like sleeping. I should sleep. I'm going to sleep.

Milo (the other face must be him) shakes me. "You need to be awake now," he insists, "This won't work if you're out of it."

"I've changed my mind," Alex tries to retreat but Milo pulls her back.

"It's easy," he says, "I've seen it done a dozen times."

"No, no, this is a supreeeemely bad idea."

'No,' I argue, slowly. 'Don't.' The words come out like heavy treacle and land on my lap in an incoherent puddle.

"Maybe we should try tomorrow?" Tom argues.

"No, you need to do this while she can't fight you off."

Alex pulls a face.

"Is it safe?" Tom asks of Milo.

"Do you want your friend back?"

Neither Tom or Alex respond, they look at each other, at me, then both nod solemnly.

"Then, it doesn't matter whether it's safe then, does it?"

"Okayfuckitlet'sdothis," Alex insists in a garble.

I watch the trio suspiciously, eager to bite, or kick, or strike or kill, but unable to muster my limbs to respond. Alex takes a few steps backwards as if she is about to rugby tackle me, and Tom and Milo begin to unteather me from the chair into which I have been tied. First, Milo unstraps my waist. Then Tom and he tackle an ankle each, I try to kick out but my legs respond like warm jelly.

Placing their strong arms upon mine they unstrap my wrists and hold me tight, though I have already realised that I can do little to heave them from my person. My head feels like a brick, perched upon a toothpick, the rest of my body as useless as the dead thing it is. I am surprised when it takes them little effort to lift me to my feet. They hold me up between them, my head lols heavily down. I can see my feet, they hold no weight where they touch the floor, Tom and Milo support me in my entirety. I cannot see what they are doing, and cannot brace myself for what happens next.

"Ready?" Tom asks Alex.

"No!" she protests.

"Just take a run up," says my second pallbearer, "be commited."

"I cannae do it!" Alex insists.

"It'll be fine like," Tom encourages, "Just close your eyes and think of Hal".

I hear her pace, fluster, pace some more, slap her hands to her side in casual abandon, swear and then, "Fine, but if I land face first on the floor it's yer ass I'm kickin', Tom." She takes a deep, empty breath and commits, "here goes nothing!"

I hear her pounding towards me in those big heavy boots, and then it hits.

It's like being slammed into an ice cold wall. It bruises. It stings. It leaves a mark.

* * *

"Yesssssss!" Alex says, with my mouth. She fist pumps the air in an uncouth manner. She runs up the stairs, with my legs. She slams into the bathroom, practically pulling off the door handle, with my hand. She stares into the mirror, with my eyes. It is not my reflection but Alex's which stares back. "This is sooooo weird!"

_Get out!_ I try and fight her off.

"Shut up, Belinda, this was _your _idea, remember?"

Tom and Milo follow behind. Tom runs. Milo just strolls in his old way.

"Miss Weaver?" Tom says, throwing himself into the bathroom and almost stumbling over his cumbersome legs in the process.

"Rah, rah, rah, I'm so pretty, everybody loves me, yah yah, rah rah, look at me I'm Belinda Weaver and I'm soooo clever," she says to the mirror, pouting comically with my lips. Flicking my hair like a child.

_Not funny, Alex!_

"Alex?!"

Alex smiles, showing all of my teeth. She winks at Tom with my eye, skips towards him with my feet and plants a kiss on his cheek.

Tom blushes. So do I.

"Right!" says Alex, "Let's do this thing, babes!" she smacks my backside.

* * *

_It's not going to work_, I tell her as we drive in Hal's car. Milo and Tom are in the front. Alex (and I) are in the back. She keeps winding down the window and waving at people in the street like a crazy person. They wave back and she can't seem to contain her joy.

"You shouldn't try and draw so much attention Alex," Milo insists like a stern father in the front.

"I sort of thought that was the point," Alex says. She coughs as if she has something in her throat, "I'm no getting used to this, I sound totally weird. Too…English," she say with disgust.

"Not until we get there," Tom says, looking in the rear-view mirror, fascinated by what he is seeing. "There's no point until then like."

"But they can _see_ me!" Alex explains, "You take it for granted, but it's kind of a novelty for me now."

"The point is to be seen by the _right_ people."

_Don't you feel hungry, Alex?_ I ask her. She is looking wistfully at a family pushing their toddler down the street. She tries to ignore me but I know it will feel for her when she sees them. I know she feels it, because I don't. It's refreshing, freeing, not to want to climb out of the window of the car and devour every one of them. But if she _has_ to drive my body then she is going to have to deal with its needs. I tell her as much.

"I'm fine. Be quiet."

"What?" Tom asks.

"Oh! Nothing," Alex smiles my smile.

We arrive at Cardiff's University Hospital a few minutes later. Tom gets out the car and opens the door for me while Alex struggles for the strap. She hasn't yet quite got the hang of driving someone else's body. She laughs and tells Tom, "You'd never have done that for me!"

Tom blushes again. Alex kisses him on the cheek again, like she is a movie star alighting from a limousine upon a red carpet.

_I really wish you would stop doing that_, I tell her. _It's not fair._

"It feels funny," she says, and pats Tom on the cheek, "he's all stubbly."

"Alex, are you going to be okay n'all?" Tom seems genuinely worried, as if my own madness has rubbed off upon his friend.

"I'll be fine, Belinda's plan will work perfectly, won't it Belinda?"

I decline to answer.

"She says it's going to be fine, Tom, stop worrying."

* * *

We are alone in the hospital now, just me and Alex, standing as one in the waiting room. It is full. It is full of sick, impatient, people. There is blood, on some, and Alex cannot take her eyes off it.

_Not here!_ I tell her. _Hold it together._

She looks up.

_There's nothing there. Focus Alex_. I wonder how my madness feels for a stranger. She lifts her hand and rests it where my heart should be beating. "It's so strange," she says, "and so similar"

_Death is universally similar, Alex, whether you keep walking or not._

A young girl walks past us with her hand holding a compress to her forward. Alex follows almost unconsciously. I catch her. _Alex, you're not a vampire, remember that, please. _

She tries to shake it free. "Yes, you're right, you're right, I know you're right."

"Are you alright dear?" says a lovely little welsh nurse.

Alex, my hand shaking, holds it out to the nurse, who takes it gently and shakes it as she expects to do, "B..My name's B - Belinda W-weaver." Alex says, struggling, I can tell, with the painful urges my nature is pushing her towards. "I...I'm not dead."

The nurse laughs, "Well isn't that lovely, my dear, let's get you looked at shall we. You're terribly cold."

_Not good enough, Alex, try harder!_

"Aren't you listening?" Alex says to the nurse, she is holding her hand too tightly, the nurse tries to resist and pull herself free , "People think i'm dead, it was in all the papers, but I'm not can't you see. My name is Belinda Weaver. I'm a...I'm a vampire."

The nurse laughs again, this time, a little nervous, if not terrified. She fondles something in her pocket with her other hand, presumably for some kind of phone or alert system. _Better. _I say._ Better, now let her go Alex. _ It was meant to be Alex stopping _me_ from loosing it in the presence of so many humans, so much blood, not the other way around! Then again, I know what would happen if it was just me doing this. The nice little nurse wouldn't get very far. Alex, with difficulty, lets go. The nurse tends to her bruised hand. "You need to get the police, or something," Alex tells the nurse. "It's very important you tell them that I'm here and that they have to put me away for a long time, preferably somewhere no where near humans."

The nurse looks at me as though I am mad.

I _am_ mad, but that's not the point.

"Perhaps we should find you somewhere to wait Miss."

"Belinda. Weaver," Alex clarifies. "You can write it down if you like. But _definitely, **definitely,**_call the police, or the council, or the fire brigade...someone reeeally important. I'll just...go over here." Alex stumbles towards a seat in the waiting room. The person sitting beside us shifts away a little, afraid of the stench of insanity that I am no doubt giving off. Or perhaps they can tell what we are.

The little nurse totters off to the reception and talks conspiratorially with the receptionist. Alex leans over to the man at our side, "I'm Lady Belinda Weaver. I'm a vampire."

The man gets up and moves seats. Alex laughs, she's enjoying this now. She leans over to the next person, sitting behind her, "Hi, Belinda Weaver, super-bitch." Again the person, a lady, gets up and moves.

Amused Alex hops seats two places to sit beside a handsome young man who is looking at me in a lacivious manner, "Belinda Weaver. V -" The fangs appear, the darkness swims over my eyes. Alex slaps my hand over my mouth and stands and runs off.

"Fuck!" she says, finding a reflective surface but seeing only her own features there and no trace of my monstrous side. "How do you get rid of this shit?" she asks.

_Just relax, calm down, focus on something positive._

Alex struggles to do so. "Bunnies. Fluffy clouds. Naked rugby players." _That doesn't help! "_Kittens. Fuck it! Mittens! Bollocks! Brown paper packages, tied up with string!" It's not working. She wanders down the corridor aimlessly, trying not to catch anyone's eye.

"New boots! Football with my brothers! H..." _Don't you dare think of Hal!_ "Leave it out, I don't know what else to do!" She blindly tries a few doors in a panic. Eventually she gives up when they are all either peopled or locked, and puts all my weight and strength behind the nearest locked one. Pulling us within, she shuts the door and rests my head against the wood.

_Just try and think of nothing,_ I help,_ clear your mind._

It is cold. I can feel her wanting to let go of me, to leave my body.

"I can't do this," she says.

_Yes, that's it, just let go._

Alex backs us into a corner and tries to calm herself. We both know it's not going to work. We stare at the glass window of the door, both of us read the letters painted there upon the glass in gleaming mirrored white. "Y-G-O-L-O-T-O-M-A-E-H"..._Heamotology._

She wouldn't have been conscious of the hunger bringing her here, of it driving her towards an accessible blood supply, but the minute we realise where we are she has already started looking. The hunger drives her, she opens the cupboards, the drawers, the boxes, and fridges until she finds them. A stack of bags full of blood. Each shelf labelled appropriately.

_Alex...don't,_ I beg her. _Let go, I can control it._

"No one has to die, how can we do this if you're driving me nuts or go loopy because you're craving. It's okay." She eyes the blood bag hungrily.

_Listen to yourself!_ _Think of how you took the piss out Hal for what he did. Think, Alex, think! _

"It's not the same."

_No it's worse. He drank barely any of your blood when you were already dead. You take this and you're depriving someone of something that could save a life._

"No one will know! We don't have to tell Hal, and anyway, it's not me that's craving it, it's you. It's your fault if I do this."

_No! Alex, please, I don't want it. Don't put it in my system, I beg you. I want to stop!_

Alex has taken hold of one of the bags in her hand. "It's cold," she says, as if this surprises her. She turns to look for something to open it with and then she sees them. Three men in grey have entered the room. They are poised, calmly waiting.

"You!" she says, and drops the bag with a plastic slap on the floor. "It's...you? You... you took my body!"

"Miss Weaver," smiles one of the men in grey. He carries a large electrical stun gun. I remember how well those worked on Hal, and me too when they first found me.

Alex sees it too. She backs away slowly, hands held up in supplication. Then she shrugs, she gives up, that perfect anger I have come to understand is unleashed. She runs at them, bringing out all of my monstrosity with her rage; she takes me with her.

"You took my body you fucking b...!" The men in grey floor us both with the simple flip of a switch.


	23. Phlegethon's Waters

**Chapter 23: Phlegethon's Waters**

At the threshold of the red door there is a man in old Army attire, by my judgement the fashion is of Greek origin, late Hellenic, an austere era of metal breast plates and big helmets which I am glad to have missed out on. He is the kind of build that might keep out a barbarian hoard single handed, if you asked, and you wouldn't need to ask nicely, or twice. The small shouldered delicacy of Kobyashi and my own frame are dwarfed by his looming.

Stuart, as I suppose I should call him, smacks the soldier upon the shoulder with a chummy familiarity. The soldier looks down at him as one might if Stuart were only a child kicking at his heal.

"Friend or Foe?"

"Oh, come on Phlegyas!" Stuart laughs, "It's me."

The bullock of a man does not move. Stuart, for reasons entirely inexplicable to me, proceeds to don an American accent, "Prisoner transfer. Cell block 1138?" He turns to look at as if I should be amused. "Sorry, I couldn't resist" His childish smile dissipates when he realises I am not engaged with his sense of humour, "Star Wars: A New Hope? The bit with the wookie?" Nothing. "This makes you the wookie."

"I have never seen Star Wars," I elucidate flatly. This hardly seems appropriate. Yet Stuart continues with some sort of devilish amusement. I have the horrible sensation he is intentionally dawdling and cannot fathom why. Something nips at my ankles in the dark. I try to see what it is but can make nothing out. Nevertheless, when I turn, I have a distinct feeling we are not alone here.

"You're kidding me?" Stuart says, tugging me back to his attention. I give him nothing but it does nothing to discourage him. "You're not kidding me? Seriously, I'm disappointed, old chap."

"You, and others," I think sadly of Alex, we had been working out way up to that particular cinematographic offering.

"Way to waste your life, old chap! Oh well, your loss. Great story, there's this bit with Darth Vader where -"

"Friend or Foe?" The demon at the door repeats. He is equally unamused.

"Sorry, yes, _friend_."

Phlegyas looks then at Stuart in an interrogative manner, his hand upon the weapon at his side, then nods, "You may enter."

Stuart pulls forward, I follow as I am bid until the great soldier's hand slaps against my chest.

"Not him, he is not meant for here."

Stuart sighs notably, "Yes, yes, he is Phlegy, I brought him for your master."

"My master is not present."

"Sorry, I meant the Collector. He's a guest."

"We do not take _guests_," the soldier insists. It seems Stuart's powers of persuasion carry no weight with this man.

"Perhaps we should return?" I hazard with a smile, "It's no bother."

"NO!" he snaps, then calms. "No, this is all arranged." He apologises to me as if we are being rudely turned away from a restaurant or some other social establishment, "I'm sorry about this, Hal, simple misunderstanding. They weren't as bright as everyone thought, the Greeks."

Phleygas punches Stuart in the arm. "Ow!"

"You may enter. He may not," he repeats.

"This is exasperating, Phlegyas! It's all arranged I tell you. I _told _you when I came through."

The soldier looks me about again. He reaches out his great arm and grasps at my jaw with a hand I am convinced is as large as my head twice over. He inspects me as if I am a stud for purchase and then drops me rudely.

"Your _guest_ is not a friend of this place. There has work for him yet in the other place. He is not welcome here today. I recommend you return him whence he came and go about your business in some other way."

Stuart is about to loose his well manicured temper, but the door behind the soldier cracks open. It hangs ajar.

The anger still boils in Stuart, but he smiles. I watch as he begins to emanate that same glow before I stare at the door. As it opens it is as if the presence in the darkness behind us takes a backwards step, as guests at a party might, awaiting the explosion from the opening of a bottle of champagne to be surprised at the virginal breath let free.

The small opening causes the gatekeeper to stumble from his purchase. He turns towards the door, disregarding myself and Stuart, and extracts his sword from its sheath.

This moment gives Stuart the moment to strike. It is only then I appreciate the full power that he possesses, I realise when we fought he was restraining himself. Stuart retracts his arm as if he is about to throw a clear right hook at the solider, and then, with silent control he swings his arm forward. It enters the man, piercing armour, bone and flesh as if they were air. The soldier stands upright in shock before Stuart retracts his fist with a squelch. In his small hand he holds a withered walnut of a heart. It is black and sour, pumps and splutters for a moment like a dying rodent and then quickly wheezes out of life. The soldier turns, looks Stuart in the eye and then collapses in a deflated grey heap upon the floor. Stuart drops the heart on the floor and steps over the gatekeeper's corpse, pulling me alongside.

"Was that really a good idea?" I ask, stepping over the man.

"He'll be up and about in no time, Hal, it takes more than that to keep someone like him down."

Stuart opens the red door wide, pulls me inside and pushes it shut behind us.

Once we are within he breathes a sigh of relief, as if he has come home after a great journey. He pulls me towards him, at first I am terribly afraid that he is about to embrace me, but instead he turns me and removes the painful vines which he had used to bind me. I pull my arms up to myself to nurse the wounds there, and take the advantage I have to slap Stuart soundly. It is hardly as if he will take action; I know now I am valuable. He can do nothing to hurt me now.

Stuart nurses his cheek and smiles.

"Welcome!" I hear a cheery voice behind me and turn quickly.

The corridor is old, dilapidated, and cold. At the end of a corridor there is a small man with a small face. He has loose features, tiny eyes, clustered around a piggish nose. He holds an old woolen cardigan to him, as it is too big for his body, beneath which he wears a white shirt with its collar unclasped. His hair is light brown, neatly kept but thin. He carries a candle, it illuminates his warm smile eerily. "Such a pleasure, come on in!"

I cannot say why, but everything about him scares me from my wits. I swallow, but follow as I am bid. Stuart whispers in my ear as we walk, "I'll get you back for that later, old chap."

* * *

Canto xii: _"draweth near the river of blood, within _

_which boiling is whoe'er by violence doth injure others."_

* * *

I follow but not in silence, the little man is quite talkative. "Thought it best to come and fetch you, Phlegyas can be a terrible jobsworth when he wants to be. I thought he'd give you jip." He has a soft accent, distinctly of South London, though I am sure that is not from where he hails. Everything he says is friendly but I distrust it. He walks with a determined shuffle.

The stink as we pass is horrific, I have never come upon a foulness like it. It drives all of my natures into a spin, the eagerness to douse myself in bleach is palpable. At one point I have to stop to measure my senses, the little man walks up and pats me on the shoulder, "Take deep breaths and just think of England, it passes, or you get used to it."

Eventually we reach a far door, "And this is me," he opens the door and ushers us both through, "You'll have to excuse the mess, I have tried to make it nice, but you know how it is. You just can't get the staff." He looks daggers at Stuart when he says this, then smiles as if the glance was unintentional.

Where we have come to is distinctly human, the hellish stench has passed in favour of simple damp and rot, my tension is not alleviated. I feel surrounded by decrepitude. The windows are boarded, but hung with heavy, moth eaten velvet curtains. No light encroaches from beyond, so upon every surface there have been piled candles, which have poured mountains of wax upon the surfaces and down to the floor. The Collector, for a presume this little man is he, must have lived like this for some time. Strange things can be found on the floor; a child's abandoned shoe, half displaced into leaves and mire; a deflated ball; books in french; a torn skirt; a stapler with a snowfall of little yellowed circles crawling from within like they are being birthed. I look up, "I can see what you mean." I smile, trying to mimic his light-hearted attitude and not betray my anxiety.

"This way," we follow into a room that is large, with a fireplace lit with a roaring fire. Alongside the fireplace an opulent table has been laid, "Dinner, I know the walk can be tough. Sit, sit!" he urges.

We are not alone in this room. I spot the humans immediately, I smelled them long before, I hungered for them almost immediately, but try to maintain my decorum. A young girl, she cannot be older than seventeen, rushes to the chair opposite the Collector and begs that I sit. I try to be gentle towards her, offer her a thankful smile, but her fear reeks upon her as she scurries away. A young man, probably in his early twenties, asian, starved thin, attends to the Collector. Stuart is left to get his own chair. I am surprised. It seems that he is not in the favour of this man, and I can tell he has noted it too. He seems to have lost his calm. While I try to hide me anxiety, Stuart is trying to hide his fear and confusion. He is doing a worse job than I am.

We are seated. The little man smiles. He ushers the humans towards him with a delicate nod of his head and a smile. "A bottle of the 4362 please, and three plates of the venison I think, that goes nicely. Henry," he looks at me with his small red eyes, "fancy a starter?"

"What are you?" I ask, bluntly.

"Me?" the man, "I'm a secret. Perhaps, you'd like something simple to start, a cup-of tea and a biscuit? Hob-Nob? Custard Crème? I've some Garibaldi's hereabouts." He ushers the humans away. They scurry to their jobs with desperation to please.

This was getting me no-where. "Do you have a name at least?"

"Oh, heaps, I was named Tartarean Phlegethon by a great man what must be at least a millenia ago now, but it's a little flowery and you know how names go out of fashion, everyone butchers it horribly. Most people call me 'Collector' these days, it's easier to pronounce. But a little... I don't know...matter of fact?"

"Anything shorter, more, informal? We are at dinner after all."

He watches me for a moment and then pouts strangely, raises his eyes to the ceiling and starts muttering to himself, eventually he hits upon something, "Let's go with Arthur, it's close enough."

"Arthur?"

"A favorite film of mine, do you go to the cinema much? I just got netflix. Marvellous invention. I love Dudley Moore, don't you? Such a funny little man and blinding on the piano!"

"I can't say I've seen it," In my head I can hear Alex laughing. It is a sound which lifts my spirits.

The humans bluster into the room like a storm, then calm with fear when the Collector sees them. They place a plate in front of me and pour what I immediately recognise to be blood, into the cut glass beside the meat.

It is vampire blood. It is Belinda's blood, I know that the minute it is un-corked. The Collector, Athur, smiles. Stuart grasps at the glass hungrily and forces back the liqour. His eyes burn red as he drinks...so that's how he has changed.

The Collector waits with distaste for Stuart to finish guzzling, and then lifts the glass to his own lips. He takes a deep breath of it and sips, savours. Replacing the glass to the table he looks to my setting with disappointment "This particular vintage is relatively new to my collection, quite rare. Fruity, full bodied with," he twists the glass up to the light, the blood swills rosily up and down the sides, "excellent legs." He lifts it to his nose and inhales its scent, "It's adventurous, bold, flirtatious with the nostrils and," he takes another sip washing it around his mouth, "only recently deflowered. With an undertone, yes, of someone old far beyond her years."

He drinks it all back.

"Well," Arthur looks at me, "You know it's rude not to enjoy a meal provided for you?"

"I don't drink of my own," I inform him as unemotionally as I am able, but every atom of my gut is churning at disgust for what they have both just done.

"Never?"

"Once, that was special circumstances."

"Oh! Let me guess, whose? I love a game. It was Snow's wasn't it? You inauguration into his old, old club of old, old Vampires. Such silly nonsense. He liked his friends to obey him you know. Did you know sharing your blood is a particularly effective way to do that. It makes those little whispers, those small requests, to do as he would bid, impossible ignore. The old tricks are the best, they say. I wonder how often you ask yourself how much did he make you do, and how much of it was your choice? But then, does it really matter if you enjoyed yourself, Henry? The intoxication and inebriation of servitude are sometimes the same thing. I wonder," he muses to himself with a smile, "will his flavour still be mixed in with yours?"

I shrug.

"So did you drink of him willingly?"

I nod, "Though there was a matter of a bet."

"A bet."

"A friend bet me money I wouldn't be offered, so I sought it out. Pursued the opportunity, to prove a point."

"How much?"

"Five pounds in modern terms."

"So you became an Old One to win five pounds from a friend? You ensared yourself to one of the most insidious of your kind, for eternity, to prove a point?"

I think, "That about sums it up, yes."

"Oh, I like you, you're just delicious."

"Thank you."

"So, drink up, eat up, and we'll get started on the tour shall we? Stuart, if you wouldn't mind?"

Stuart stands and takes a well carved stake from a drawer. He stands behind me, pulling my sore shoulders against the back of the chair making me wince. He holds the stake to my back.

The Collector encourages, "Come on, you've done it before, and it's hardly like you need to ensare yourself to Miss Weaver's will by drinking her blood now is it? From what I hear she does a fair job of _that_ without the needing to force anyone, doesn't she Stuart? Pulled a real number him by the looks of it."

With my hand, shaking, I pick up the glass. I can't bring myself to do it. Not Belinda!

Arthur shakes his head, "Of course if you would prefer human?" He ushers one of the humans to my position at the table. Terrified, but pliant, the girl lays her head on the wood before me, pulling back her hair to expose her neck. "Please," she whispers, "I'm begging you. I want to die."

I shake my head. No, no! She looks up with such desperate eyes it brings the hunger forward, fangs and all the necessary accouterments follow forthwith.

Arthur seems pleased, "Hell, why not, I'm a generous host, you can have both!"

"No," I insist, putting the monster away as best I can. The stake Stuart puts at my back forces forward and I arch as best as I can to avoid its prick.

"It's preferable to death, surely?" Arthur says.

I take a risk. I call his bluff, "You won't stake me. I'm the last of the Old Ones. I'm too valuable to you. We both know that. I won't take either drink willingly. Not if you threaten. Not if you ask nicely. I'm sick of people trying to control me. I'm my own man and I make my own choices now, I say 'no'."

"Very well, we'll do it the philistine way," he nods at Stuart, "and I was so hoping for a civilised supper. I heard you were a gentleman you know."

"Sorry to disappoint."

Stuart pockets the stake and holds my arms to the chair with all of his strength. The Collector rises from his chair, he takes, from a small plate the small asian man carries, a biscuit, and eats upon it hungrily as he approaches. He takes my glass in his hand.

"I want you to know, Henry, I ask you to do this because I want you to know what it is like, why I do what I do. It will make you appreciate how special you all are, how important, to me. You will be safe here, from the dangers of the world, I will feed you, protect you and all I require is one little thing."

"Blood?"

"Is it much to ask, it is what you are for after all?"

He stands above me, this little man, who seems to look at no more terrifying than any man; yet I can see his years in him, the closer he comes. I can feel his power.

"What we are for?"

"Vampires, yes, though I believe that is a name you gave yourself, you are a filtration system. An apparatus, it is as simple as that. We cannot enjoy human blood so you were created so that we might enjoy the pleasures mankind as to offer. You get something, I get something. It is a simple transaction. I am a purveyor of a unique product, and you, Henry, are part of the infrastructure. As a species you should be grateful that the demand is quite low right now. I miss the 1200s, there was a magnificent demand back then that was almost impossible to meet. But these days there are fewer of us, less trade, luckily I am a connoisseur, even if I was the only one of my kind left I am sure I would still have a collection. "

"You created us?" I stare in astonishment.

"It's a grandiose way of putting things, Henry, but yes, I suppose I had a hand in it." He lifts the glass to my lips. I turn away but he ushers the humans forward. As bid they hold me steady. The Collector pinches my cheeks and pours. Belinda's blood slips into my mouth and, before I can spit it back in his face, he clamps his hand over my mouth and nose. "Waste not, want not," he says, "Miss Weaver sacrificed a lot for this vintage, you wouldn't want to be rude now would you, Henry."

I could stay here for hours and not swallow but tasting her again on my lips is intoxicating. The liquid swills around in my mouth, cold and sweet and bitter, all at once. The Collector is right, I can taste so much more of her than I ever could before. The drop or two of Snow's blood which I was given tasted stale and old, bitter, powerful. This...this...it still burns with humanity, it dances with love, it explodes in my stomach with a thousand emotions and flavours. I cannot tell what he has done to it, or whether this is natural, but it... it is Heaven. Nothing I have ever put to my lips has ever tasted that good.

I swallow and I resist the urge to ask for more.

Stuart, the humans, Arthur, all let go. I don't know what to say. I feel the sedative they had put into the blood begin to work almost immediately.

"Now," the Collector instructs, "Eat up, Let's get you processed, shall we? I'm dying to see what you've got."

* * *

_"More dreadful things have I seen which Phlegethon bids imprisoned sinners suffer, compassing them about with his stream of fire; what punishment waits for me, and what place, I know." Seneca _

**- End of Part 3 -**


	24. With regret, you're fired

**Part 4: "Love is my religion and I could die for that. I could die for you."**

* * *

**Chapter 24 - With regret, you're fired**

The drug is quick but I do my best to bear it up as I feel it chase Belinda's blood about my system. "Strike a light, Hal, I said, eat! It's not that hard, is it?" Arthur instructs with jovial charm. I stare at the plate of rich food before me and then I turn my head as best I can, it is already becoming difficult. His small mouth creases discreetly with an amusement which he attempts to bury in his underbite, it serves to shrink his eyes into little creased balls of flesh.

I choose to humour him; how else might I react? As bid, I fight with my numbing limbs to grasp hold of the knife and fork which I have been given. It takes all my concentration, my hands shake as I attempt to cut the meat before me which is thick, juicy, and seems as unappetizing to me as eating glass. It drifts in and out of focus, but I aim to endure.

The collector sighs and snatches the cutlery from my grip, "No, no…" he says, and shakes his jowls sadly. He lays the cutlery back where it came from. The angles are straight to begin with, but he moves them so that they are at disturbingly odd angles, despite my encroaching inadequacies I managed to straighten them, which makes him laugh. In a quick movement he pushes both the plate, its contents and the cutlery onto the floor. It offends my senses, but I resist the urge to use the last of my strength to clean the mess. He has the measure of me already. He picks up the knife where I stare at it and wipes it upon his cardigan, breathing upon it to shine the silver. It clouds and clears. Standing perfectly still, except for the delicate method he adopts to clean the implement, he watches me for a moment. Stuart laughs. Arthur lifts one finger to his lips bidding Stuart to silence. The ill-favored solicitor quickly does as he has been told. With the same finger, the Collector then ushers the human girl near. Pointing with the knife he indicates where she must place herself. With the nearest thing I have ever seen to relief the young girl clambers upon the table before me, her eyes look up from where before my plate had been. Her face is full of hope. It is the strangest thing. She nods at me. I understand. But I decline her offer, slowly, and determinedly, I shake my head.

"I said, you could have both, Henry. Her blood will allow you to resist the drug I've given you a little longer. It would be a shame to pass up the opportunity out of sheer stubbornness?"

The Collector strikes upon an idea. He reaches into his pocket. He removes his wallet. He opens it and lays a five pound note upon the girl's throat like a magician laying a handkerchief upon a dove. She tries her best to remain still, though her entire body is shaking.

"Bet you a fiver you can't drink her dry, Hal."

I shake my head.

"No!" I say, pushing myself and the chair away from the table.

The chair clatters across the floor with an echo but I am not as substantial, my legs fall from under me. I land near the dinner Arthur pushed aside. He approaches me and I look up. For such a petite, unobtrusive man, he seems a giant to me then.

"Look at you," Arthur says bitterly, "Goodness knows what Snow saw in you? Stuart," he looks to the solicitor with a knowing smile, "nothing special about this one at all. Take him back. I only collect _the best_. This one is no better than any common or garden vampire. I bet he tastes of silt."

He brings the knife down so cleanly into the girl's throat that I hear it pierce the paper of the note, her flesh, her bone, her larynx, and the table upon the other side with little resistance. She coughs, bubbles and struggles with her last breath as Arthur pulls me to my feet to meet the blood that flows from her. "What use to me is a vampire that won't drink what he's given, Hal?" He asks. I clasp the edges of the table to help my purchase. He plants his hand upon my head and pushes me down, holding my cheek in her juices. I try to resist at first, try to hold myself apart from it, but he is stronger than I could have fathomed, or I am weaker, and soon I succumb. Once bathed in it, I edge my way, like a blind child for it's mother's milk, to the wound he has made. It finds me willing, and I drink.

Moments later the Collector loosens his knife and extracts the bloody fiver. He folds it neatly and tucks it in my trouser pocket.

"Point proven, I think," he says.

* * *

We walk, though I find it difficult. Stuart follows behind me and picks me up when I fall. I use the walls as a guide and follow, half drunk, half drugged, the little man in the dark corridor. There is no light here. His silhouette is cut from the darkness by the candle he carries. Every so often he turns back to check on me, I see him smile. It is a face I think that will haunt me all my days, if only he would show his malevolence, but not once have his pleasantries broken. There is a light in the distance. It is a sharp, bright, white light, it dances as I try to focus, opening and closing my eyes tightly to encourage them to adjust and make out the meaning of it. I hake my head to alleviate the dizziness, and then we have arrived. The Collector opens the door.

The room is clean. Spotless. White tiled. Compared to the rest of the house there is an over-powering smell of cleanliness here that would normally calm me had I not the aching feeling in the pit of my stomach that this is not a _good_ thing. Stuart ushers me inside to a gurney which I can do little but hold on to in order to keep my feet. I look about myself in an attempt to assess my surroundings.

Stuart looks about him too.

"Where's Thresdon?" he asks. I wipe my mouth, still bloodied, I do not notice that I am sucking upon my fingers until they are clean.

"Oh, sorry, Stuart, did I fail to mention your wife killed him?"

"What!"

"Yeah," the Collector says in a flippant manner, wandering towards Stuart and adjusting his tie for him. "Bloody inconvenient, if you'll s'cuse the pun."

"How!"

"Wrong question."

"Wr...I don't understand."

"It'll come to you."

I want to lie down, I need to lie down, just to close my eyes and sleep. I am horribly tired. With difficulty I try to clamber up onto the bed before me. It is cold, metallic, but it appeals to me as much as a well made bed might. Seeing me struggle, the Collector helps me up, "Here we go, Henry, upsidaisy!"

"Thank you," I say, trying to get comfortable.

"You're welcome." He pats me on the head.

I find myself thinking of Belinda. She dances through my senses. She is all I can think of. I feel her with her arms around me. I feel her breasts against my chest. I feel her mouth upon my neck. Her hands in my hair. Her lips upon mine. I am inside her, and she is inside of me. When I try and focus I see her before my eyes, smiling. She laughs and it sparkles. I feel her hair tickle my cheeks as she writhes, it dances on my chest. But somehow, I know she is not really there, "Where's Belinda?" I ask as the image of her floats away, leaving me cold once more.

"There we go. How about that Stuart? You said in your interview that you were smart, and here's a doped up vampire beating you to the punchline," the Collector pats me on the shoulder, "calm down there my friend, you're getting a little carried away. I don't know, vampires, no self-control," he rolls his small eyes with pride.

"Where's Belinda!" Stuart asks with sudden fear.

"Belinda?"

"YES!"

"I don't advise getting shirty, Stuart."

"I'm sorry, please, what happened, where is she?"

"She's not here."

"What!" Panic from the young solicitor now, which strikes me as hilarious. Typical Belinda! After all we have done, after all Connie fought for, after all Stuart has done, lost, promised; she beat us all. I was an idiot to think she would ever need my help, even to escape from hell. Of course, if anyone could get themselves out of this mess, it's her. I love her all the more. _'Aren't I clever, Hal?' _she whispers in my ear.

"Yes, she killed my Doctor, destroyed a good month's worth of quality product and then scarpered. Seems you were right about that 'loophole'. It's plugged now though. I suppose I should thank you," for the first time his pleasantries fail. His small face darkens with conviction, "I'm not going to, by the way."

"What?"

"I thought about it, I really did, and then realised I should fire you instead."

"What!"

"Don't think I don't know why you took the job here, Stuart? Spying for Rook like a good little soldier, much good the information will do him. Then double crossing him to rescue a girl who clearly doesn't give two figs for you. Did you tell Rook what you know?"

"No...No... not yet."

"And then you think you can pull the wool over _my_ eyes, what kind of numpty do you take me for, mate? You think I was born yesterday?"

"N-no, I..."

"I was miscarried during the first Egyptian plague Mr Leftbridge! I was dumped in the Nile and turned it to blood; I was brought into my life by an Angel and have lived over three thousand, four hundred years; and you have the audacity to think that **YOU**, a little boy with a crush on a little vampire, can get one over on **ME**?"

"No..." Stuart falls to his knees, "I mean, I'm sorry, please..."

"You're an utter tit, Stuart," Arthur concludes, sadly, "and, with regret, you're fired."

"No! Please!" he starts to drift almost immediately as the Collector says the words, but it is like no fade I have ever seen. He is becoming dark, black, heavy smoke. It settles rather than dissipates, it crawls towards a hole in the floor. "Please, I'm begging you, give me another opportunity. I'll be loyal! I promise!"

The Collector looks at me, he winks. "Well, I suppose a position _has_ recently opened up."

"Anything! Please!"

Goodness knows what happens to demons who loose favour with their masters. I know no more about what becomes of them than what becomes of us when we become dust. I have a horrible feeling that their fate is worse. From the terror painted upon Stuart's face, I am sure of it.

"Fine. You're on probation," he smiles at me, "I'm such a softy, really I am."

The matter which made Stuart whole begins to claw its way back, reconstituting him where he kneels.

Something beeps, "Pardon me, must take this." He searches his cardigan absently, "Can never find the bloomin' thing. Bear with me, there it is!" he puts it to his ear. Holding one hand out to encourage silence from myself and Stuart, who pulls himself to his feet. He is still shaking with terror, and perhaps the realisation of the magnitude of his failures. I wonder if either of us will ever see Belinda again?

The Collector hangs up his phone with a smile, "We have an exciting shipment on it's way in Stuart, must dash. Sort _that_ out," he points at me, "botch it, spoil it, spill it, or cock it up in the slightest way, Stuart, and I swear I will personally escort you to the Hell which awaits you."

He leaves us and Stuart stands coldly, confused, unsure of himself and alone.

Eventually he turns and stares at me, "Well," he says, his voice cracked and weak from humility at first, begins to grow in strength. "I guess at least this way I still get half of what I want. Shall we get started?"


	25. The Road is Long

**Chapter 25 - The Road is Long**

When I wake it is dark, cramped and I have no idea where we are. Whatever drug it is that successfully paralyses me is at work. I find it oddly comforting, like stepping into a pair of well worn slippers.

There is a small moment of anxiety when, at first, I feel as if I am alone, and then I find can't get the lyrics to 'He ain't heavy, he's my brother' out of my head. I soon realise that this is mostly because I have a tone deaf scottish person who has no comprehension of the second verse, still rattling around inside me and she can't get the song out of _her_ mind.

_The road is looooooooooong, __humm hm hm, hmmm hmmmm, hm hmmmm, something, something...__He ain't heavy, __he's myyyy brother...? No._

_The road is looooooooooong, __humm hm hm, hmmm hmmmm, hm hmmmm, dum dum, something, something...__He ain't heavy, '__**Cause**, he's myyyy brotherrrrr... _

Perhaps she has been going for hours, I wouldn't know. It's like having glaswegian tinnitus.

_Oh. My. Good. God! Will you please stop!_ I beg her. I wonder if she slept too, perhaps she has been awake this whole time?

_Hang on, I think I've got it..._ she hums the opening harmonica chords in a fashion that cuts right through me like nails on a black board.

So, here I am again, I joke to myself, 'tidied away'. Locked in my body, terrified, untrusting of everyone around me, and trying to best the agony of the hunger within. Except **this** time I'm not alone. This time, when she's not preoccupied with trying to remember the lyrics to 1960 pop ballads, or 'Mon the Hoops', or 'You'll never walk alone', or something obscene by Roy Chubby Brown, I have **this** to contend with too…

_I can't believe it! I can't ACTUALLY believe it! These guys! THESE…ARSEHOLES TOOK MY BODY! _

_Yes, Alex. I know…You mentioned._

_ARSEHOLES!_

_Look, this is sort of pointless, babes. Just keep calm._

**_ARSEHOLES!_**

_I get it. _

_I'm going te kill them! I'm going te haunt them until they die, and then, THEN, I'm going te haunt them some more. It'll be intense, like Nightmare on Elm street, with head-butting! I'm going te go ask them where my body is. Don't stop me, I'm going._

_Please, Alex, stay!_

_Let go! They'll soon give up where my body's at when I'm done with them._

_Alex, I can't do this without you, please babes. You'll spoil everything just focus on the job at hand. _

_I'll come back, I just want te mess with them a little bit!_

And so it goes on. I am not sure now how far from Cardiff we are, but the exhaustion that fighting to keep hold of Alex induces, convinces me that we have been commuting for more than a year. When she gets a head of steam on her, her reasoning is cyclical, immutable, like a worry that my subconscious mind cannot put to rest. It means every minute is painfully drawn out.

When the never-ending internal duologue about her damned corpse briefly settles she either panics…

_ I mean, what if they don't even take us te where Hal is?_

_They will, I'm certain_

_Aye, but what if they don't?_

_But they will._

_Okaaaay, but what if they don't!_

Or I have to deal with this…

_Soooo…_

_Look, Alex, can we just be quiet for a moment? Please…I'm tired, I'm anxious and I need to concentrate._

_You said I've got te keep you alert! That's what you said,_ she whines at me sarcastically,_ 'keep me sane, keep me alert, babes.' I'm only trying te be a help. _

_Yes, because the one thing I need right now is a snarky inner scot._

_Your idea!_

_Okay, fine, but can we just give it a rest a minute. Just think of nothing, try and empty your thoughts, won't you? It's cramped enough without having to listen to you witter on._

_…_

_..._

_Soooo... okay, there was this boy in his first sex ed class, right? And the teacher draws a cock on the board. She's like, "does anyone know what this is?" And the boy answers, "course I do, my da has two of them." "Two?" the teacher goes. "Yeah, a small one te pee with and big one te brush the baby sitter's teeth!"_

_Really? This is how you want to pass the time. We're being driven to the gates of Hell, unable to fight the terrors that await us, and you think **that** is appropriate?_

_Fine! Suit yerser'. Just trying te lighten the mood... There's no need te be such a bitch about everything._

_Did you have many female friends, Alex?_

* * *

The transport in which we have been moved mercifully comes to an eventual rest. I have started counting the moments until I can be separated from Alex, like they are precious diamonds. Admittedly that's getting on _her_ nerves, but this just makes it more enjoyable. _At least the voices in my head these days are normally my own,_ I tell her,_ they're often less high-maintenance too_.

There is something both comforting and disturbing about having a distinctly different soul knocking about inside me, a duel set of memories, opinions and ideas. The singular mercy is that while I have Alex to contend with there is no room for anything else to take hold of me. I feel surprisingly zen. I am not panicking. I am not hallucinating. I am not afraid. I am calm as a hindu cow. I am being taken back to the hell I have lived in since I was turned and yet, I feel something almost like peace. Perhaps because I know I'm going to see Hal again. Is it pathetic?

_Yes, Yes, Belinda it is._

_Christ, can't I even inner monologue without you judging me?_

_No, and frankly it's totally freaking me out, I don't know whether I'm coming or going,_Alex says, _and there are somethings in your head I think I'd rather forget ever having in mine thank you **very** much. _She's lying. I know as well as she does that there are some of my memories that we'll both enjoy.

_Well I don't really want to know about you and your year eleven history teacher, but **that's** not an image which is going in a hurry. Don't you have any standards?_

_Wow, talk about violation of privacy._

_Alex...you're a ghost, and you're presently possessing my body. I don't think you're the one who should be compaining about feeling violated right now._

_Can we get off the subject of violation please, only...images. So much 'cannot unsee' going on right now it's obscene. Can't you just switch those thoughts off?_

_I did mention my mind isn't something I really have control over these days didn't 1?_

_Did I mention knowing you bonked Hal is something I'd rather forget? I don't need the close ups._

I laugh.

Actually, we both do.

I feel a strange affinity with Alex then, this is totally a moment.

_Funny thing is, _I tell Alex,_ I feel remarkably in control right now. I spent my entire human life fighting against any kind of control, that's why I ended up involved in this...this world. It made me feel rebellious, like some kind of agent of chaos, like I was breaking free. The thing is I think all the time I was just trying to control **myself** I think, just in a different way, you know? All these secrets, and schemes, and plans, and plots I had. At the end of it I guess I'm a bit of a control freak after all._

_Deep, Belinda, deep. I'm fascinated. Ye should right a book or something._

_I was trying to share, be nice, that's what girls **do** Alex. There's no need to be facetious!_

_There's no need te be all touchy-feely either. It's just plain weird._

_Hal would understand._

_Hal trumps your problems like times over, love. You think ye've control issues? Love, you should see his sock drawer! It's alphabetised! I mean...how's that even possible?_

The van, I presume it's a van, stops. I hear a car door open, slam closed. A second follows suit. Footsteps now, slow, collected steps. An unlocking. The rattle of a van door and then light. Day light, gleaming warm and red through my eyelids.

_Keep calm and carry on, Alex. _

_Who, you telling to keep calm? You keep calm!_

_Just, oh whatever, you get my point._

Two cold hands take hold of my ankles, another pair of arms hook under mine. We are lifted, a dead weight in strangers arms, and carried. Everything gets darker. No one speaks.

"Gentlemen," I hear a voice. "I hear you've found our fugitive?" **Now** I panic. Even with Alex filling my head my brain finds all those wasted synapses and spaces that aren't full of hunger and madness, and it recycles them into terror. A storm rages, now it is Alex's turn to hold on.

_Holy Jaesus Linny, what the actual fuck?_

I feel a warm hand upon my forehead. If at all possible, it turns me colder. I think my fear begins to permeate into Alex by osmosis, she too is getting restless within. I feel like a sewn-up coat full of rabid rats. Someone opens my eyes. I know who it is before I see him, The Collector smiles down with a forgiving smile. But this man does not forgive. His head so close to mine I want to scream. I can do nothing but feel my insides rot away as he looks into me.

"Hello there, my dear," he says, "So pleased to have you back." He moves away, I stare at the ceiling. The lump of dead heart in my chest is so hungry to beat it feels like a cancerous immovable lump of pain trying to eat me up.

_Breathe, Belinda, Breathe, _Alex reassures, as if I am in some kind of anti-natal class.

**_NOT HELPING! _**I tell her. _**DEAD, REMEMBER!**_

The Collector is suddenly in view again. He looks in at me curiously. It feels as if he looks right through me. I have never seen his eyes properly, squashed as they are into his features like droppings in dough, but I see them clearly now. So close, so dark, it is almost as if they go on forever. They flush red as his small mouth creases into an understanding smile. Then he is gone again. "Straight into storage if you will, Gentlemen, 4362."

_Alex, he knows, _I say. My mouth dries as I try to turn myself to ash by will alone.

_Nah.._. she says. But she knows I'm right.


	26. Meanwhile, back in the Merc

**Chapter 26 – Meanwhile, back in the Merc**

Milo and Tom travel in silence.

At the beginning, when they saw the men load Belinda into the back of the van there had been a stern debate regarding who should drive. They had been waiting for hours. The debate had not been settled quickly. Milo's argument was that he knew where they were going and would be less conspicuous when following them. Tom's reason was that Hal was very picky about who drove his car and would be "well mardy" if he found Tom had let anyone take charge of the wheel. It was icy cold, the wee hours of the morning, by the time they noted the men in grey wheeling Belinda, unconscious (they presumed Alex too) into the back of a van.

"And what would he say about the six bags of explosives in the back, Tom?"

Tom ignored the insinuation, "Plus," he had added whistfully, "she's sensitive, like. She don't respond to everyone."

"It's a car, and, you, Tom…are an idiot."

Tom had bristled. "It's _Hal's_ car. He's particular."

"He's probably dead," Milo smiled.

There was a moment of staring before Tom realised their quarry was leaving. He threw a growl at Milo and then clambered, as quickly as he could, into the driving seat. He teased the key in the ignition in just the right way to get the Merc to wake up. Flooring the pedal and slipping straight into second he almost left with out Milo but thought against it a few feet up the road. He slammed on the breaks and put his head out the window.

"Coming or what?"

Milo stomped to the car and got in. He had shut the door behind him so forcefully that the glass had parted from its rubber and let a draft into the car for the entire journey.

Since then, apart from cursory observations about the flow of traffic, the weather, and the occasional wary glance at each other, nothing has been said.

"Look, I'm not bein' rude or nowt but why are you doin' this?" Tom asks to break the tension, somewhere around Nottingham.

"Doing what?"

"Helping, like?"

Milo shuffles uncomfortably in his seat. He stares at the flapping rubber trim on the window. "Should fix that, if your friend is so 'particular'."

"I asked you a question mate."

Milo turns to look at Tom with disdain.

There is something between them that they can both feel but neither acknowledge. It's a memory of a small pink thing. It used to cry when Tom pulled faces, laugh when Hal read poetry, and bubble with contentment when Annie held her; but it's not really there. It's just the idea of her that hangs between them, the recollection that for a moment, just before Annie took her life, Tom and Milo had come to a concord about Eve's future. Tom was not proud of it and had not come to terms with either the decision he had made, or the one which had been made for them. He just knew neither was good. What makes it worse was that when Tom sees himself in Milo's eyes, he sees a traitor. For a moment Tom feels as if he is about to cry, but he doesn't. He can count the times he has cried on one hand. He can even name them: McNair, Nina, George, Annie, Eve. He looks at the other hand, at the next finger there. He doesn't want that one to be Hal. He doesn't ever want to have to count to six on this one.

"I said, I asked you a question," Tom repeats, sniffing back the recollection.

Milo returns his attention to the traffic. The passage of suburban neverwhere sweeps slowly passed them. He searches for the van in the distance. Tom is in the middle lane and not climbing above 60mph. Milo points out that hogging the middle lane is hardly inconspicuous as the traffic drives around them in exasperation. It doesn't bother the young werewolf, he waits for an answer.

"I'm helping because she asked me to," Milo says flippantly. "Someone saves your life, you pay the favour back. Then I'll be on my merry. That's all."

"That's all?"

"That, Tom, is all."

"Only, you didn't seem that selfless when you were last in town, mate?"

"Is that a question or an observation."

"Bit a' both, I guess."

"What of it?"

"Just making conversation, like."

"Talk about the weather."

"Nippy innit," Tom snaps and adds, "So, you really want to help?" barely breaking the stride in his interrogation.

"Yes, Tom, I _really_ want to help."

"I just don't get it, mate, I just don't."

"Tom, whatever I am, I am not your 'mate'."

"You're tellin' me."

"After this, we won't be friends. I don't _do_ friends."

"Fair enough. Only you seemed pretty chummy with the Old Ones, like."

"Survival of the fittest, Tom."

"That a game show?"

"It's a quote. Darwin."

"He an Old One too?"

"Never mind."

The Merc feels small and full of the space that conversation should fill. Milo turns on the radio. Tom turns it off again. It begins to rain. With a heavy sigh Milo works to fix the window so that he remains dry. Eventually he gives up and hugs his jacket closer too him. Tom turns on the heating. The coils in the old dash burn red, singeing the damp air and warming the leather. The Merc has an odd smell to it when the heat pumps through, both of them get it. A day after the change for them both and the stench of hot dust, wet rain, damp seats, car fumes, oil, muriatic acid, nitroglycerin and anxiety is a heady mix. Milo stifles his nose with his fist and then gives up and warms his hands against the heat from the grill.

"Thanks," he grunts.

"Not a problem...mate."

In the distance the light is turning russet and yellow. The sky looks like a fading bruise. Little red eyes from the tail-lights of the van stare back at them from the distance. They are far enough away that Tom and Milo can remain under their radar as traffic thins to almost nothing. There are a few moments when Tom hangs so far back that he panics that they have lost them. He tries to floor the Merc and she slowly creeps up in speed to 70 with a rattle and a groan. It's like trying to whip a grandma out of bed and into a nightclub.

"So, what was it like?"

"What?"

"The other side?"

"Don't remember," Milo insists.

"Must've been mad, like, you were a bit..."

"Whatever I was, it's forgotten."

"Yeah," Tom smiles as he remembers the puppy like man who Belinda walked in, "an' Belinda, Miss Weaver, like, she's not like what she was."

"I wouldn't know, it was just a job. She's just another vampire. Just like all the rest."

"I dunno," he smiles. He's met a lot of vampires, killed dozens. He's never met a vampire like her. "You seemed to really like 'er, before."

"Before what?"

"Before the other night with the full moon and that. Dead protective you were, it was kinda nice like."

"I thought it was forgotten?" Milo threatens. It doesn't phase Tom in the slightest.

"Yeah, well, I like to remember nice things. It's good to protect a lady, like."

"The Lady can protect herself, Tom."

"Yeah, well you say that, but like I said, she ain't the same. Before, yeah, she was tough and that. I'll grant you that. I mean she nearly did for Hal, and, well I know he can be a soppy git, and a bit useless if you catch him in the wrong light, right? And okay, so I could probably take him in a fight. But thing is, he's still an Old One ain't he? So by my reckoning, and from what we've 'ad to put up with since your old Boss voodoo'd him or whatever...anyway, my point is..." he wished he had his flashcards. "My point is, Mr ... Milo, that it strikes me she needs someone to look after her n'that, and, I put it to you, that should be a man of experience."

Milo laughs, "You think I should be a gentleman? Offer?"

"Well, you've worked for vampires before, like."

"Never again."

"Why not?" Tom feels almost offended, McNair would have been stunned at this he is sure.

"Why not? Because, Tom, Vampires aren't the winning team any more. I told you before, there's nothin' noble about being on the team that looses."

"But the Old Ones are dead. There ain't a war anymore."

Milo shakes his head. "Tom, my friend, one werewolf to another, there's _always_ a War. You just have to work out which is the one worth fighting."

"Which is the one worth fightin' then?"

"The one you can win."

Milo turns off the heat. The car seems painfully silent all of a sudden as the air ceases to pump. The rain has stopped and they are almost alone on the road. It could even be described as peaceful.

The sun rises raw umber directly ahead of them. For such a cold day it is painfully warm, it stains the backs of Tom's eyes, and blurs the road from his vision for a moment. He knocks the visor down to shield his sight. He knocks the little plastic star that hangs from the wing mirror as he does so. The fresh scent of lemony plastic wafts about the cramped space. It reminds him of the scent of the other werewolf that drove this car.

Leo never tried to fight any war; he just wanted to with the closest thing to a family he could have until he reached the end of his days. At the end of it, that's all Tom wants. He knows, down to his regularly broken bones, that the only war worth fighting is **_for_ **that. That's why he's in a freezing cold, temperamental, old tin can of a car, on the way to rescue his friend, because for the first time in his life he almost felt like he was winning the war for a _real_ life, a normal life, a human life; with friends, and beer at the pub, and birthday parties, and debates over the Antiques Road Show, takeaways and football on Saturdays with 'the lads'. It seems like such a little war. It won't save a species. It doesn't right a wrong. It'll never make history. No one will write poetry about his war. No one will protest in the streets. No one will paint great works of art. No one will weep if he fails, or throw him a parade if he succeeds.

It's such a little war.

But it feels harder to win than anything in the world. He suspects he will loose. At the end of it that is what sets him apart from Milo, he realises; he will keep fighting anyway.

The van turns off the main road. Shortly after that they follow behind.


	27. You're doing it wrong

**Chapter 27 - You're doing it wrong**

Stuart pulls up a chair and searches in his pocket for his mobile phone. "Smart phones, brilliant things!" he says, "You never need to learn anything if you've got one of these in your pocket." He is still visibly shaken by the Collector's threats, and has to sit to steady himself. I note that his hand is shaking. He clasps at the bewildering lump of technology in his hand as if it is the holy grail. It seems as if he is convinced it will somehow be bless him with enlightenment. He reads, and mutters as he goes. "It'll be fine," he says. He is not talking to me.

"Here we go! Wikihow: I love you. _How to draw blood. 1: Set up for Blood Draw_," Stuart reads out loud, following the screen with his finger. He slides into the chair beside me as a grass snake would wind its way around a stone in a storm. He holds on to it as if he might be torn apart were it not there. I try to pull myself up, recalling what is actually about to happen, but purchase is not my strong suit right now either. My arms slip from underneath me and I land back on the gurney with a jolt. "Who needs a medical degree?" Stuart laughs nervously, "_Observe any patient precautions_." He looks at me oddly, and scratches his neat hair, "_Take note of signs behind the patient's bed or on the patient's chart. Observe isolation restrictions, and make sure that, if the blood test requires fasting, that the patient fasted for the appropriate amount of time. Well, I guess fasting is a little inappropriate in this instance. Did you have the venison?"_

I shake my head. "You don't have to do this," I say, but I know reasoning with him is futile. I just need the strength to fight him off. If Belinda made it out, I can too! I had a reason to follow willingly before, I felt I was doing something noble, saving (however tangentially) a life I had previously taken. Now? Now I have no reason to be willing, I will fight this with all I have.

"Just the human then, should be fine, what do you think?"

"Please, Stuart, you don't have to do this. You can leave. You don't have to..."

"No, Hal, you don't get it? I _want _to do this. Do you know what it feels like to be rejected? I'm not a bad-guy, you know? Worst case scenario I loved someone too much." He continues, "_Introduce yourself to your patient. Explain what you are about to do as you draw blood."_ He laughs, "Hal, I'm Stuart, are you sitting comfortably?"

**"No!"** I try to get up again, Stuart holds me down deftly. I grasp at his collar to try and pull myself up, he fights me off as easily as if I were intoxicated. I am, but that is hardly relevant. Even a drunk can put up a fight if pushed, often with more bite, so to speak.

"_Wash and sanitize your hands. Put on sanitary gloves." _He looks about the room, "No need for that is there?"

I panic!

He fights me back again, "Please, Hal, there's no point, just lie still. You'll thank me for getting this over quickly, really." He says that, but every time I feel as if I am becoming stronger, more lucid. The Collector was right, with the girl's blood in my system I may have a fighting chance to regain the upper hand. Hopefully before Stuart gives me botulism!

"_Blah, blah, forms, blah, blah. Confirm the patient's identity from the wristband or by asking the patient for a name and date of birth._ How old _are _you Hal? Isn't balling Belinda considered some kind of pedophilia?" His face turns to disgust.

I take advantage of his hubris and pull myself away in the opposite direction at all the speed I can muster. I reach the floor with a smack that jars my teeth and bruises my skull. Stuart sighs, and quickly dances around to drag me back. With protests and much flailing I am returned to the gurney

"_Seat the patient in a chair,_ it says, I'm trying to do this properly, Hal, work with me. It would help if you'd co-operate. Oh...look!"

I'm not going to co-operate, but I don't need to, Stuart has noticed that the Doctor's gurney is equipped with restraints. Clearly no vampire is expected to willingly accept this 'process', I am no exception.

"There, see, much easier," Stuart insists when he is done with the straps. I struggle but he's right. This will be much easier for him now. I know how this will go. I know because I practically invented the technique. It doesn't matter that normally my associates were much cruder with their skills, nor that they always had access to the right equipment, nor that they were working on humans and I have not been human for a long, long time...once you have access to a vein, even an undead one, the rest is easy. I remember the countless times I ordered people like Stuart to do this. I remember keeping myself separate from the 'process', enjoying the spoils, often observing, advising, critiquing the skill of my associates efforts. I gave them tips on the right place to cut, or maim; the best positions to get the most blood out of a body before it congealed; the best place to buy equipment, and how to get the best prices; how to clean store and repurpose any household item into perfect materials for use. I could have written a book on the technique. During one week of heavy drinking I may even have done so, there was a period of dictation once that has never been one-hundred percent clear.

It didn't matter who did it, they all had their own way of following instruction. They never did it right, never how I wanted, not perfectly, but the result was the same: blood, lots of it.

"_The chair should have an armrest to support the patient's arm but should not have wheels. Make sure that the patient's arm is not bent at the elbow. If the patient is lying down, place a pillow under the patient's arm for additional support." _He searches for something to use to satisfy the instruction, finds a doctor's smock, rolls it up into a ball and puts it under my arm. "How's that?" He asks.

"Pointless," I sigh.

"_Assemble your supplies. Make sure that your blood tubes and blood culture bottles have not expired." _He looks around the room and starts to search the drawers and cupboards for the necessary particulars. I try to release myself, but can't reach the straps. Everything has started to come sharply into focus now.

Returning with two stainless steel buckets, needles, tubes and sundry, Stuart pushes the chair beside away. He places one bucket either side of the gurney. He is growing in confidence as I am loosing my battle. I can't fathom how to extract myself from this situation, reasoning with him will not do. He is doing this as much out of revenge as instruction. Perhaps I can appeal to the man he was, before all this? He must have been a man once, that boy whom Connie spoke so sadly of, crying at Belinda's funeral, "Stuart, please, Belinda wouldn't want you to do this, be _this_. You're a good man. You were, _once_, I'm sure. I'm begging you try to be that man again."

He looks down at me with the kind of hatred I do not think I have ever experienced, not in all my long years. "She loved _you_ didn't she?" he says through gritted teeth.

I don't know how to answer. I am still unsure how she felt about me. "I had hoped..."

"And are you a _good_ man, Hal?"

I swallow. How can I answer that, after all I have been, done, seen? "I...I am trying to be."

"But I think we both know you aren't, are you old bean?"

I shake my head. I am many things, but I have never considered myself good. At least, not in the conventional sense and never for a significant length of time.

"_Decide which arm you will be drawing from or let your patient decide," _Stuart says, the bluntness in his reading indicating that my attempts at appeal have fallen flat. He examines my left arm, and then my right. He unbuttons the cuff on my right arm and pushes up my shirt sleeve untidily. Then, shrugging, he leans over me and begins to do the same with my right. "May as well go with both, mightn't we, save this taking too long. Tie_ a tourniquet around the patient's arm about 3" to 4" (7.5cm to 10 cm) above the venipuncture site."_

He dances his fingers up my arm to measure the location he will place the tourniquet, the tips of his fingers are warm, almost scolding against the coldness of my skin. The whole room is cold and yet when he touches me it is like a dance of cigarette burns up my arms. He must have completed the change now, I wonder if there is any humanity left in him at all? The hatred and dogmatism all demons are capable of has eaten him whole. It is almost all he is now.

I want him dead, but I admit I feel sorry for him. I can't get that image out of my head, even after everything he has done, after everything that he is about to do, I think of Connie's story.

"Did you really think she was dead?" I ask.

"When?"

"Connie, she said she told you she was dead. You said you knew, what she was doing. Did you really think she was dead?"

"_Select the appropriate needle. The type of needle that you choose will depend on the patient's age, physical characteristics and the amount of blood that you plan to draw," _he says. He looks at the collection he has selected. He looks at my arms. He looks at the tubs he has procured. He returns the tray of needles to the side and looks in the drawers.

"Stuart..."

"Shh," he says looking intently at the contents of the drawers.

"Stuart, please."

"Shut up, Hal."

"Stuart, she's not dead."

"What are you trying to do? Do you want me to recall that pain. Don't you think it eats at me every _second_. Do you think I haven't stopped grieving. I have never stopped. She's **dead**, Hal, the girl I loved died the minute she heard your name. And it may have taken her nearly ten years to actually kill me, but I died that day too. Maybe it took me until now to realise it, but there it is. You're right, she never loved _me_, not the man I was, because I was already dead to her. I realised that when Connie told me what had happened to her; what you had done. I realised I was never exciting enough, never dangerous enough, not to her. I could never give her what she wanted, because I never really knew her. But maybe if I survive I'll have a chance with her now? I can learn about this new person she has become, because I'll be different. I can move on and love the creature you turned her into, and because of you I've become more than what I was, more that even _you_ are. I can give her anything she wants. I can protect her, feed her, clothe her, keep her warm at night, keep the monsters from her door. You think that grief that eats at me will make me feel guilty? You're an idiot...it's like a fuel to me. I'll find her, I always find her, and when I do, she'll thank me for saving her life, what there is left of it...what did _you do?"_

I killed her.

"Perhaps you're right?" I concede, though it breaks my heart, "Maybe you have earned her affection more than I have, but you've given up so much, if you do this you won't be able to go back. There are more important things in life!"

"No, Hal, there isn't. Perhaps you can live like some kind of loveless monk, but I need that woman to love me. That's all I've ever needed until now. It might seem pathetic, but -"

"It's not, it's still human...that will go," I assure him, "You won't want that any more, not after."

" - you didn't let me finish, I was going to say 'I kind of think it's worth the risk.' Don't get me wrong, I fucking _love_ Linny. I gave up my life, my soul, _and_ a very promising career for her," he shrugs, "but in all honesty I _hate_ you more! If I never love another thing again I'll still wake up happy in the morning knowing I have done this. Now, where were we? _Find a Vein,_ it says..." he reads off the phone. Putting it safe in his pocket he picks an implement from the drawer and returns to my side.

He doesn't hold a needle. He has found a surgical knife. "Let's get this over with, shall we?" he says.

"No, no, that's not...you're doing it wrong!" I say, recalling the thousand moments I had told the same to my past cohorts, back when I was on the other side of the equation.

"Stay still! This'll do just fine. I mean, it's hardly like it's going to kill you now is it?"

Holding down my upper arm to gain good purchase, with a clean sweep he cuts a deep gash down the length of my forearm. I scream out. The pain is intense, every nerve in my body tenses when he pulls the blade through the flesh, muscle, veins. My muscles flare, every fibre of my being contracts with the pain of it. My body contracts from the gurney, pulling at the restraints as if a thousand volts had streamed through my bones. I curse, the vampire in me flares in defense as my body spasms. My fingers and arm tighten and then fail as nerves are severed and tendons are snapped. Then my blood swims forth, pouring instantly from the wound, and down my arm. It gushes heavily into the pail below.

**"You petulant fucking child! Let me go!"**

"Now, now, look if you'd have settled down in the first place before the anesthetic wore off you'd be having a party right now, if you will talk yourself into lucidity you've only got yourself to blame."

"**I'm going to destroy you, you whiny little virgin. I swear," **I rail, the bile pours out of my mouth like my blood, I am dizzy with it. It's surprisingly freeing, what was it they used to call it back in the day? Bloodletting! I am bleeding out the bad humours, plethorising my soul of poison as it pours. **"I am a fucking _patient_ vampire. I don't care if you live for a millennia. I can wait. The lowest circles of Hell will seem like a fucking holiday camp after I'm done with you!"**

"Fine," Stuart says, and takes his blade to my other arm. "But it still won't make us even."


	28. Pieces of the People We Love

_Author's note: Continued love to Seamay, soundtrack to this particular chapter to add to your list can be found at vimeo dot com slash 221686. A__lso some kudos to TangentiallyTJ and personal love for the lovely reviews and WhimsyFox who has just started on this adventure as I wind it down. Not many chapters left guys, it'll be done the day before the show airs. And yes, things may get a weency bit spoilerific/teasey_

_ (prior warning!)_Spon x

* * *

**Chapter 28 - Pieces of the People We Love**

The door closes in on us and we are in the dark.

_OhmyGodhowcoldisit! _grumbles Alex. _I mean, you forget, you know, how cold 'cold' really is when you're dead or whatever. And I'm from Scotland, I'm made of cold, but damn me if my...well, i suppose, technically, your...ass is like a block of ice in here. You could chisel it! _

_Alex, _I say, trying to remain calm, not to worry, get irate, and essentially keep my shiny shit together. _Please, can we just get out me out of here. _

Alex gets it almost immediately, she relaxes. The bravado and bullshit-o-meter she seems to keep at tilt dials back a notch or two. She gets that this is a situation for me that I do not want to find myself in longer than at all possible. She can feel how being back here makes me feel. It is as if a great ache has rested in my stomach, a resignation, a hopelessness, a great big lump of misery. It's a buzz kill.

_Sorry, it's just, feeling stuff, even the shit stuff, it's kind of nice._

_I know, and I'm sorry._

_Why?_

_I can't keep this up for ever Alex, you're like an infection in me right now; my body is trying to reject you, to build up an immunity. We need to get out of here before it's too late. Once you're out, you're out, I won't be able to do this again. _

_Oh great! _Alex chips in my head, her voice like a blunt instrument, _Just brilliant. I'm the fucking flu now._

_I wish it wasn't like this, Alex._

_I know, _she says. She means it too. She knows I'm sincere, it's refreshing, comforting. Odd...for the first time in my life I feel like I had made a real friend, and of all the people in the world, it's Alex.

The fact that Alex doesn't respond to this feeling that is bubbling in me, that she doesn't protest, or snark, or snap, or even guffaw, gives me a warm, fuzzy sensation that maybe she feels the same. If there is one thing I have learned about Alex it's that she means more when she says nothing at all.

_I resent that, _Alex laughs.

_Totally a moment, though babes. _I say, the warm sensation of a smile fills my body.

_Yup...Totally a moment,_ there is no sarcasm in her tone. She smiles.

No, I mean I smile, as in physically. I actually smile. There is movement in my useless body again!

_Did you feel that?_ I ask.

_What?_

The plan had been that Alex would leave my body and meet up with Tom and Milo when they arrived; they were going to bring something to counteract the drug the Collector and his colleagues had used to render me useless; Alex would rentaghost me out of storage, 'jump start' my body and then we could search out Hal with an army of four. The fact that the Collector had seemed to recognise that I was under the influence of a second soul has terrified me, and although he hasn't done anything yet (terrifying in itself), this can only mean that we needed to act fast. There might not be the luxury of waiting for the werewolves.

_You're right,_ Alex agrees. _So what?_

_So you just managed to make me move!_

_I did?_

_Yes, I don't know how but you did. Try again, do anything, just try to move..._

I relax, presuming that if I try to do anything it might make it harder for her. I could try myself but that might have the inadvertent effect of pushing Alex out, I feel stronger with myself now. If Alex is just a coat I have slipped on and have managed to get stuck in, then it feels distinctly as if I am capable of unzipping her right now and stepping out. I have to resist that feeling for as long as I can.

I can feel Alex struggling inside me, straining.

_Don't give me a hernia, babes!_

_This isn't easy Linny! It's not like being a ghost came with an instruction manual. I didn't get taught **this. **_

_Just take your time maybe, focus on one thing._

My left arm flies up and my hand smacks me in the face. _Yessssssssssss! _Alex fistpumps with the same arm. I even feel myself do a little dance of joy, _How's that!_

_Funny, Alex._

"Sorry," she says out loud, "Couldn't resist. Oh!" she surprises herself with my voice, which is slurred at first until she gains better control. She does this by returning to a full chorus 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother'. By the time she is done my body is fully in her control. It feels strange, so different from before. This time I feel like a rag doll, thrust about, marionette-like in the darkness. _Alex, be gentle, _I beg. _'Delicate package, Handle-with-care' _

It's different for her too. My body is clearly still not able to move under its own steam, it takes great concentration for her but eventually I turn over onto my front. With cramped difficulty she shuffles me forward. We look through the little window into the grim corridor beyond.

"I don't need to tell you," Alex says into the dark, "But this is so not where I expected you'd have been since we last met."

_No shit._

"Seriously, I had these images of you sunning yourself in LA or something, or rocking up to film premiers and eating the famous people I didn't like."

_Any requests?_

"The cast of TOWIE?"

_I have some standards, Alex. _

"Fair enough."

_Can you get us out of here, please!_

Alex shrugs, holding tightly physically and metaphysically, for both of us fear she and I will separate before I have the gift of my own limbs back, she rentaghosts us in the general direction of 'not trapped in a dark pit somewhere south of Hell'._  
_

* * *

Standing is a problem.

We land somewhere outside the storage cupboard, in which I had been put, and quickly land in a heap. The floor is damp and, now, so am I. Alex walks my hands up the wall to gain a grip. It takes some time, but I am elated. We're out! I'm out! No fire! No destruction! No alarms! No... anything. For a moment I worry, is this a good thing, am I being lulled into a false sense of security of have we actually done it? The corridor is hideous, damp, grimy and dark but it is innocuous. It is just a corridor. I know that behind every door there is another me, another vampire who has suffered the pain but I also know that we are monsters, they are too, the decision to help them is not one I can make. I am focusing on just one.

"Hal," says Alex.

_Yes,_ I agree,_ Hal. He's got to be here, I swear it. _We look at the labyrinth of storage compartments, we haven't the time to check them all. _First things first, there's a place on site where the Collector did his...well there's drugs there, all kinds. A shot of adrenaline will do it I reckon, babes. First basement floor, take the stairs._

Alex struggles forth, step by step. It's as if she is lifting lead boots on the moon. She walks my hands along the walls lifting and holding to each door as if she is scaling a ledge at a thousand feet. It is slow progress but we are at the steps. She looks up. The staircase is dark, it pulls away into the distance like something by Escher, confused, twisting, distorted.

_You can do this, Alex. Please I can't hold on to you much longer. _

Alex nods. She is nothing if not determined. Her stubborness is her best quality.

"Thanks," she says, awkwardly, "You're maybe not so bad yourself."

_Moment,_ I laugh.

"Totally."

Climbing now, step by step. It's getting harder for her, but I push with all my might to give her as much control as I can. My body is trying to push her free and loosing the battle with its limbs in the process.

"What on earth is that!" Alex says when we have covered two floors.

I can't quite understand where she is coming from , so concentrate, my senses become my own for a moment and my brain recognises a scent that dances on the air. It's dark like musk and light like fresh rain water, mixed together at the same time. It's clean and powerful and sweet. My senses aren't fooling me, I remember that scent. _I think_, I tell Alex sadly, _that's Hal's blood._

In a moment it is as if there is nothing holding me back. Alex drives forwards, propelled by me, in the direction my senses take her. Soon we are at a door, there is a window. Looking inside...there he is!

"Oh my God!" Alex says, clasping her hand to my mouth to stifle the terror, surprise and worry that bursts out of us both when we see him. I can feel myself pushing at her to get free, I can feel the desperation to be myself again and feel the terror of what that means. I can't leave Alex to do this alone, Hal needs us both. He needs us really badly. We are about to rush in to help when I see Stuart. He walks towards Hal and collects a pail of what he has taken. "Linny, what is going on? That's the guy!" Alex whispers.

_Stuart, _I confirm, sadly_. _I remember the annoying little boy that used to be dragged around to play when we still lived at Highcastle. I remember how he always hung at my shoulder, even when I was older, he was always there. He turned up at parties, dinners, even Christmas once. Then he saved my life. Now this. It doesn't make any sense. This is not the man I knew. This, is not the man I had married.

_You realise I'm going to kill him the minute you leave my body, Alex?_ I tell her.

Alex nods. "You might have to stop me first," she says darkly. I have a horrible feeling that we're rubbing off on each other the wrong way. I don't want Alex to become a monster like I am. She understands. "It's not you," she says, "I just have a real problem with people who think it's okay to cut pieces out of people I love."


	29. In Euphoria

**Chapter 29 – In Euphoria**

Pain is a funny thing, you learn this when you cause it; it is surprisingly fleeting. Human or not, the body has a marvelous capacity to manage it. Too much, and eventually you just become numb. The brain shuts down, starves itself of the chemicals and electricity required for communicating the sensation to the pain sensors. That's the clinical way of putting it anyway.

I had no clue about the science of it when it happened to me. Personally speaking, it felt like brutal poetry. I recall feeling the life, soul, spirit, of me being drawn out as effectively and efficiently as one might expunge the memory of a red wine stain by the application of salt. It's rather a nifty trick, seeing coarse, bitter grains suck up all that fermented fruit juice as if it were breathing it in, expanding and growing with it. Prepossessing it, only to see that when the salt has gone it leaves only the memory of an accident behind.

Whether clinical, beautiful, or terrifying, most vampires I have met push such memories aside. For me, after so much time, the moment had faded and curled into the distance like an old photograph lost in the dust of an attic room. We all find a place to store them and lock them away. Most vampires, including myself at times, eventually succeed in convincing themselves it was beautiful. I may be ashamed of great swathes of my past, but all of us are guilty of wearing Rose-tinted glasses sometimes. There were times when I was convinced that applying my fate on others was like delivering a blessing on humanity, allowing them to experience the wonder I had been party too, before I turned out the lights.

Stuart's strange brutality brings the memory of that moment back into my mind 'in glorious technicolour'.

I recall that it hit my extremities first, my finger tips, the nubs and knuckles of my toes, then the ankles, elbows, the tops of my ears, the tip of my nose. The sensation of numbness, the tingling, aching, burning nature of it then traveled up my legs like cold tar, down my neck, my spine; it crawled up my hips, scaled my torso like a fiend and buried its way into my heart.

Whatever I may have convinced myself of in later years we all know that, in those moments, that there is nothing wonderful about dying. No death is beautiful, fair or graceful. I have seen and caused thousands of deaths, every one has been cruel. Whatever the cause, natural, preternatural or at the hand of another, death is nothing more than a bad chemical joke. It's not even mysterious. It is as simple as this: the starvation of essential fluids leaves the brain in a sense of euphoria, and then, just before the end, the chemicals fail. In that split second, it doesn't matter who you are, Monster, Monarch, Minister or Mob..._everyone_ realises that there is no punchline.

Vampires just happen to like telling the same old joke, and take pleasure out of the irony of knowing that no one will laugh.

Feeling that coldness plunge its way into my heart, I wait for that moment when the comedy will fail, but this time that sensation lingers. It is as if, once it reaches my heart, death knocks on the door and, finding no life present to eat away, it waits upon the threshold like a persistent Jehovah's witness.

To be at the brink of extinction and held from it by the sheer persistence of immortality is more excruciating than any pain Stuart can impose.

At least I think it is.

"Hal?" says a voice. It is the last voice I expected to hear, and it is worse thing I _could_ hear. She came back. Why! Why! Stupid girl. She was free from this. Why would she come back! "It's okay," she says. I feel a hand on my chest. It is small, it feels like a stone. "We've got a plan. We're going to get you out of here."

We?

"Hal? Can you hear me? Just stay calm, please," she whispers softly, with such care. "Hal, it's going to be okay." I didn't think she was capable of sounding so...so...caring. Confident, yes; Passionate, certainly; but her words seem so weighted with care it surprises me. Every word is like a little embrace, weighed down with what I could only assume is...is...well there's only one word for it: love. That's it, there's something almost like love in her words. It surprises me. In the time we had together I certainly felt something, I am certain she did too, and the bitterness of not being able to see where that took us still burns inside. But the way she speaks to me, right then, it is as if we have spent no time apart at all, as if we have shared secrets, argument and affection, and silence, and laughter, and all those things which grow over time building something, something worth caring about.

Perhaps Stuart was right, perhaps I don't know her at all. Perhaps none of us ever will. In that moment, I want to try. I struggle to open my eyes. I need to know I am not imagining something, that this is not my brain playing a final joker.

"Belinda?" I ask, trying to focus.

There she is. It's her. It's _really_ her. Sweeping caramel curls fall about her face in perfect waves. She looks down at me with two worried eyes, they are such a sharp blue it scolds. She brushes her hair away to betray those elegant cheek-bones, her neck is long, which is intoxicating to look at and, from this angle, horribly tempting. I find myself stretching to meet it.

"Shh, stay still, don't try and move. You're in a bad way. We're going to get you out of here, okay, just...don't go all mental or whatever."

Perhaps my mind is playing tricks after all, Belinda sounds _so_ different to my recollection of her. This is my brain failing on me then? These are the important parts starving, dying, once and for all? It is a good thing that the Collector keeps us away from humanity after this, the thought of the man this experience might make me leaves me longing for the end.

Belinda works with care to unclasp my empty body from the gurney. "No, I'm getting him off this thing first," she says. At first I think she is talking to me, then I am convinced there is someone else in the room. I try to will my flesh to work to search for whoever she is talking too. "I'll get it in a minute, just shut up a second." I realise that she is having difficulty. It takes her a good deal of time to untether my poor corpse but soon she is done. I strain myself to move, but cant', "Stu.." I attempt to say, I want to say so much. I want to tell her I'm sorry. I want to tell her what he is. I want to tell her to leave me, run away. I want to tell her he is coming back.

She is gone now. I hear her searching through cupboards.

"Well what does it look like?" she says, "What do you mean you don't know!"

Stuart was right. Belinda has gone mad.

Suddenly she is back. She places a hand upon my cheek, squeezing so gently to gain my attention it is as if she is waking me for nothing more intrusive than sunday brunch and snuggles. "Hal, Hal, this is going to feel strange I guess, just don't freak out or anything, okay?"

"Really?" she says to herself then, "Do I have to?" She sighs audibly and in such a petulant manner it reminds me oddly of Alex. I'm sure Belinda would hate to know I thought that.

To my surprise, but little protest, I feel her clamber up onto the gurney. She does this with difficulty, as if she is somehow drunk. Eventually she succeeds in placing one knee by my hip. She then swings over her leg, pinoning her other knee beside me. She is straddled across me now.

"This is sooo wrong," she says to no-one in particular.

I have no idea what she's doing, but it feels wholly inappropriate. I feel her hand then on my shirt. She takes the buttons down carefully. I try to push her away but my arms are shredded and can't assist.

"Belinda..." I say, "No."

She places her hand upon my chest, right above my dead heart.

"Shut up, Hal, I told you not to freak out. Just think of Maggie Thatcher okay? Repeat after me _'Margret Thatcher naked on a cold day', __'Margret Thatcher naked on a cold day' ..."_

Then it hits. In one great pound and ache I feel her bring down a needle into me like a piston. Something floods my system in a wave. It hits like electricity.

For a moment, I am certain, as if my heart beats again!

I find myself bolt upright, taking short empty breaths. Belinda catches me in her arms as I propel myself forth. She laughs warmly. She smiles, with a little awkward twitch at the corners of her peach lips. I am an inch away from those blue eyes.

Judgement gets the better of me, adrenaline courses through my system like rocket fuel. I can do nothing but follow my instincts. I lock my lips upon hers, pulling her in against my body. I can feel my body heal, still empty, but fueled into existence.

Surprisingly she resists at first, but soon she relaxes into me. The needle and bottle clatter to the floor with a delicate patter as she drops them in order to hold me closer.

She kisses back.

Perhaps it is the chemicals speeding through my system, perhaps the euphoric teasing caused by the play of starvation and pain upon my brain, perhaps it is just good old fashioned lust...maybe even something more...but, whatever it is, considering that we are so close to Hell, I never thought I would feel such heaven.


	30. Possession is 910ths of the law

**Chapter 30 - Possession is 9/10ths of the law**

I don't think I have ever felt a rage like it. The betrayal of it! After all that time I had endured, all that torture, all that dreaming waiting for one moment that I wanted to be _mine_: the moment I saw Hal again, the moment I could kiss him, the moment he could kiss me. I had dreamt of it, played it out in my head a thousand times, prayed for it, begged the darkness. In none of my dreams was it meant to be like this. Never! That kiss was meant for me! She stole it. Alex could have held back, stepped aside, let me through, but no, she seized it, took it from me!

She can feel the rage of me burn inside my body like lava, but still she continues. That's the worst of it, if she was driving my body on instinct I could perhaps forgive, but no, she has realised what is happening and is following through, taking more of what is meant for me. I'm not going to stand for it. Is it fair? I ask, after all I have done, to be denied this one small thing. Fine, he thinks he is kissing me, to all intent and purpose, this is still my reward but it's not fair.

Possession is a selfish act. She hadn't just taken posession of my body, my mind, my soul, now she has taken possession of _him_. But just because you have something it doesn't really mean it's yours. My body wants her out of me, and now, so too, does everything else from which I am made. As an only child from a privileged background I grew up in a life in which I never really learnt to share, it's a lifestyle that worked just fine for me, and it will again. I push.

My body tightens in his grip, shudders, contracts, at first it spurs him on. He thinks he is the cause, that the passion of that moment has somehow inspired an orgasmic reaction in me. Alex shakes the sensation away, until she can continue forth no more. The effort of ejecting her fills me up, it is like I am fighting against the tide, stretching out with my fingers, clawing at iced water and trying to pull myself to safety, tug myself into the corners until I can put my feet on solid ground. Finally, I catch a wave, it swells, sharp and cold and physical. It propels me forth with a smack and washes her out with the tide of it. I will never give birth, but I have a horrible sensation that the sensation is grossly similar.

We part, and my body goes limp in Hal's arms. The hunger returns almost immediately.

Silence.

Hal panics, he shakes me with the little strength he has in him, "Belinda? Belinda, oh Christ!"

There is a delicate, awkward cough from behind me. Hal looks up from attempting to revive me in horror.

"So...um...Hi?" Alex says.

There is a moment's pause. I am not sure if the reality of what has happened dawns upon Hal.

"Alex!"

"Hi."

"Alex, what is going on?" He looks down at me with deeply painted worry. He shakes me. I cannot respond, my body is useless to me now, without Alex to drive. But at least I don't have to suffer the indignity of further possession. He is so pale, I wonder how long the shot of adrenaline in his system will protect him from the exhaustion that will follow. He'll need blood soon, we may not have enough time to get him to safety before hunger or fatigue kicks in.

"Did you do this?" he asks her.

"Me! Ho! _That's_ rich."

"Alex?" his tone is one of concern. He holds my cheek, pushes my hair aside and looks at me, into me. I stare back. He knows I am awake in here. His expression aches with anxiety for me. "Why did you come back?" He asks, almost in a whisper. He kisses my forehead. There it is, _that one_ is mine. So tender, so soft, so...Hal.

"Like I said, we came te get you!" Alex interrupts, "Come on." She's in a terrible hurry. There's an ache in my chest. Does she mean to leave me here...like this? There is terror in my eyes, Hal can see it.

"When did you say..." he asks absently, then the realisation hits him. He looks at me, then at Alex, then me again. Mortification paints his features. I don't think I have ever seen anyone quite so horrified. "That was... Alex, oh God. What the hell did you let me do that for?"

Alex doesn't answer. I suspect she shrugs.

"What's wrong with her? Possession is dangerous Alex, for both of you! You shouldn't have done that."

"It was her damn idea Mr Knowitall." For someone who so clearly loves Hal she has a funny way of expressing her affection. Perhaps the only way she could let herself do so, was through me, perhaps the anonymity of that kiss was what made it so easy for her to take. Still, it's no excuse. "They gave her some kind of drug," she sighs, "fine!" I hear her stomp over to where we are. She returns to the cupboard which we found the adrenaline in.

"Move over," she instructs with a sigh.

With care, for he is still in a very bad way, Hal pulls himself from beneath me. He rolls me onto my side upon the gurney we found him upon and, slowly, works his way onto his feet. He lies me back, not once taking his eyes from mine. He doesn't let me go. He just smiles. I know he's not happy I came to get him, he'll just have to deal with that. "Sorry I got carried away," he says with a smile, his hand on my cheek. "You caught me by surprise." He leans down, with difficulty given his healing wounds, and kisses me, softly. Alex: 1; Me: 2.

Alex appears on the other side of the gurney. Her face is contrite, her lips pursed oddly, "Hal?"

He looks up at her. I think had he any blood in him he might have blushed. He takes a pulls back. He holds my hand.

Alex looms above me. "Sorry," she says. I am not sure if she is sorry for the kiss or what she was about to do, or the fact that she hadn't done it sooner. She looks at Hal, "Would you...you know..."

"Oh!" he says, and then, gently reaches his fingers to my shirt buttons. "Do you mind?" he says. It's things like that I remembered about him. He's been responsible for some of the most heinous acts I have ever heard of a vampire committing, and yet, despite the fact I can neither protest nor acknowledge, he has the courtesy to ask permission of me to unbutton my shirt.

With slow care he unhooks a few of the little buttons on my shirt from their eyes. He pulls back the chequered panels of the cloth and, careful to ensure my dignity is intact, locates where he might find my heart. His hand touches awkwardly in the cleft of my left breast. He touches upon it, "Sorry, my hands are cold." he says.

"There?" Alex asks abruptly.

"If you would be so kind, Alex?"

Alex, with great force, and (I hope) accuracy, repeats the action she brought down upon Hal.

Control returns into my flesh with a thud.

Like Hal I find that the adrenaline has an immediate effect. I heave myself, my entire body, and all my rage from the gurney. Holding tight to it to ensure I do not collapse. Alex and Hal take a step back as I recover my senses. It causes me to cough, then cry out. To own my body again is magnificent, to be able to move, stretch, speak. I move my neck from side to side, clicking the bones there where they feel painful and disjointed. I rub the pain away. I swallow. I inhale. I smile at Hal. I want to throw myself into his arms, I want to cry. I don't. Instead I turn around and with a powerful swing of my arm, I slap Alex.


	31. Trespassers will be illuminated

**Chapter 31 – Trespassers will be illuminated**

_"The Central Higher Grade School in Brunswick Avenue in 1891 [was] large and equipped with laboratories and workshops according to the highest standards of the time, and in each one the upper classes formed an Organized Science School under the Science and Art Department. (fn. 108) These were the crown of the Board's system."_

Just off Strand Close, the old Blundell school is a boarded up and ominous looking adventure playground. It hadn't been a working building since 1971 when the doors had been closed on the thousand happy, harangued and excited children. The whole building reeks of a bygone age, where education was turreted, and grandiose; where teachers were all Miss, Mrs and Mr; where a caning wasn't uncommon and everything about adults was terrifying. No chance you'd get any 'chat-back' in a place like this. It's a huge red brick chapel of a school with high, gothic white windows, and specialized entrances for each sex and age group: infants, boys, girls.

Signs are plastered upon the chicken-wire fence now: 'Private property, no trespassing'; 'Keep off'. They are there to deter entry from all but ambitious humans. Nevertheless reams of illegible graffiti has been scrawled all over it, in places seemingly inaccessible to life. But if you are adventurous and curious enough it's an easy enough adventure to be had. Plenty of humans must have thought this, Tom considered as he and Milo traversed the expansive weeds and purplish buddleia, towards the spiked blue fence and an unboarded window beyond. Beside where they now stand lies the detritus of adventurous souls, fag butts, needles, grafitti can lids, a shoe. Tom wonders if they would brave the fence if they could smell what he could.

The building reeks of death. If he had been brought here without the gift of sight he would have been certain that the building had been painted in blood, that rotting corpses could be found dangling from the broken windows, that the eyes of evil watched the world from its grand turrets, and beckoned the foolish forth.

"P'raps we should wait till it's dark, like?" Tom suggests to Milo who was squats before him, holding out his hands, fingers interspliced, palms up, in order to give Tom a leg over the fence.

"And you were the one who accused _me_ of being a coward?" Milo smirks.

They had waited until the men in the van had driven off before they had crawled out of the undergrowth to break into the old building. It was lunchtime. Tom was hungry, but he has lost his appetite. This is a bad sign.

Appropriately challenged, Tom shrugs with indifference at Milo, "Just suggesting, in case _you_ were feeling nervy like." He looks up once more at the dilapidated building, swings the bag of explosives over his shoulder with care and, taking grasp of the fence spokes, steps into Milo's outstretched palms. His fellow werewolf gives him a shove upwards, allowing Tom to clasp the spokes safely. Then he pulls himself upwards with a grunt before leaping over the bars to safety. Milo, being the kind of man he is, traverses without the need of assistance. Tom dusts himself down and stomps over the undergrowth to stick his head in the hole of the window.

"I ain't sure there's anyone actually in there," he says returning back from the investigation. They saw the men carry Belinda inside, and then leave, but for all they knew the vampire had been abandoned to nothingness once within. "Seems dead strange."

"It's definitely populated, Tom," Milo assures, having been here before, "Don't know about the building, but there's an 'ole _web_ of bad-shit down below."

"Mental," Tom concludes.

"Somethin' like that," Milo reaches into his bag and retrieves a machete. He hands it to Tom. "Best to be safe," he says.

Tom feels considerably less confident with a blade than a stake, but he supposes Milo knows what he's talking about. He drops the bag into the darkness and clambers inside after it. Milo follows. They have no need for torches, the space, while dark, is intermittently illuminated by giant holes in the ceiling through which pigeons flap and green moss climbs.

"Where now?"

"Well, there's humans here, so I suppose we should just follow our noses."

Post-monthly transformation is an advantage in this instance; while the bombardment of smells is difficult to differentiate between with two wolf noses in the building the hope is that it won't take long.

"Don't forget, once we're down a level that's it, no exit till we send it sky high."

"It don't seem possible," Tom concludes, but he recalls Belinda's explanation of what might occur if they attempted exit. _'It's mostly an internal hemorrhaging kind of deal '_ she said. He thinks of George, of the mess he made of himself before the end. He had thought that was impossible too. Best not test fate, he thinks, stick with the plan.

The werewolves wade forth into the destruction, stepping on the mess left by previous explorers, and the children who long abandoned the building. There are little exercise books labeled with blue flowers and bees:_ 'Brunswick Junior High School'_ the logo says. Each book is itself grafittied with childish declarations which fascinate Tom. Having never been in a school he can't help but pick up some of the leftovers and flip through them with innocent fascination, _'Heather 4 Stephen ', 'I love Donny Osmond', 'Carol King is bitch'_ (they had entered near the 'girls' common room it seemed). There are beer cans too, strewn, rusting here and about, and abandoned boxes from homeless journeymen, makeshift drugs kits and soiled, left over clothing. Tom can smell death on it all. He wonders how many tourists, intransigents and drug addicts had arrived here hoping for sanctuary and had found only death?

"Down here," Milo instructs.

They have reached a corridor in which there is a door leading downwards. The smell is certainly most pungent from here. Before they look down, Tom catches something in the distance, he is certain he can hear music, he turns his head along the length of the abandoned corridor. There is something on the wind he doesn't like. He feels unpleasantly as if he is being watched.

"You comin'?" Milo snaps back at Tom.

Tom shrugs, the place must simply be haunted, he thinks, hardly surprising.

They descend, this time torches are required. While both of them can see a great deal without aid the darkness below the school is heavier than any kind Tom has experienced before. Milo goes first, experienced, Tom follows, occasionally swinging the torch and his glance back in the direction of the light. It shrinks away from them quickly. Occasionally Tom steps through a rotting board, or a weak step. Milo laughs, Tom gives him the finger in the darkness but watches his step more closely. Soon they are at the first level below.

"See what I mean?" Milo says, throwing the light of his torch about. The corridor seems to stretch endlessly in a dozen directions.

"Which way?" Tom asks, taking a breath of the stagnant ether. Then he catches it, he can definitely sense his friend is here. "This way," he instructs bombastically, shining his torch into the distance of one corridor. The light is soon swallowed by the darkness into which he shines it.

"No, Tom," Milo orders, pulling his kin back, "You know the plan: Humans first, Vampires second."

"Hal's down there."

"That might be so, but the women will sort that mess out. Would you rather we get the vampires out and _then_ get the humans. I can tell you how that mess will end."

Tom understands, he can't imagine introducing Hal and Belinda to a gaggle of humans is a good idea in their present state. "Fine, but let's get it over with." He reaches into his bag and extracts one of the little packets of explosives. He flips a switch for the remote detonation and rolls down into the depths of the stair case leading further below.

Milo has already started towards the scent of the humans, when he is done, Tom follows.

The stench is remarkable. It's not just blood and death, but abandonment, that Tom can smell. The closer they get the more powerful is the reek of dirt and foulness. Tom likes the outdoors, he can imagine the agony Hal would experience been trapped in this place.

"Where did you find Belinda?" he asks with care.

"Right at the bottom. It's not a nice place to be, Tom, is it?"

"No," Tom concludes, he can understand why Belinda is now two stakes short of an arsenal. "Ain't nothing nice about it. How many vampires do you think there are here?" he asks, casually placing another charge at their feet as they pass.

"Thousands."

Silence for a while, they try the empty rooms and find little to recommend them. "I don't get it." Tom concludes eventually as they near the end of the corridor.

"What?" asks Milo with exasperation.

"I spent my whole life thinking there was nowt worse than vampires."

"And?"

"Feels wrong to feel sorry for 'em like. All down _there, _and that." He looks at his feet, contemplating the thousands of captives, of what they are, what they might have done, what they might do if they were let out, and remembers that they all were humans once. He wonders if they are all as bad as each other, as bad as the worst vampires, or maybe there are some like Hal, like Belinda, like Mitchell; those he'd stretch to consider 'good'. He worries then of Hal, down there, of how he is one of so many, and then of how every vampire might have all had someone that cared who would never knew where they were; who thought them dusted, or considered themselves abandoned.

"We can't save them, Tom," the werewolf says bluntly.

"I know."

"You don't want to try either," Milo insists, clearly working out that Tom's massive capacity of compassion was in danger of getting them all killed.

"Maybe not, but ain't there some way to…"

"To what?!"

"I dunno, make amends or something for 'em."

"Yeah, we get rid of the Collector so he can't do it again."

"What is he?"

"What do you mean?"

"Is he a vampire?"

"Do you think a vampire would do this to their own kind, they all love themselves a little to much for that."

"Werewolf? Ghost?"

Milo shrugs.

"Don't tell me this guy is human!"

"Here," Milo says. They have reached a room that positively stinks of humanity, retched and dilapidated. Tom gains better purchase on the handle of the weapon given to him as his fellow werewolf gains a grasp of the door.

It's a heavy metal door, with a locking mechanism on the outside similar to the one Tom is used to on the Cafe walk-in fridge. Milo swings it open, tossing the light of the torch into the darkness hurriedly.

"Anyone here!" he calls.

"We're not going to hurt yer!" Tom adds.

There is no response.

"I'll stay here," Milo instructs, keep an eye on the door, "You check for life."

Tom eyes Milo untrustingly, "Why don't you check and I'll stay out here?" he says, cautious that there is nothing stopping this man locking the door behind him once he is inside.

"Fine," Milo sighs, "You're going to have to start trusting me, Tom, you know?"

"No I don't," Tom insists.

Milo shakes his big head and takes Tom's torch. He steps into the darkness.

Moments pass, Tom tries to peer inside. He monitors the dark corridor, trying to get his eyes accustomed to the light before he recalls he has a small maglite in the side pocket of his bag. He reaches inside but can't find it, so he grabs the bag Milo was carrying. Searching inside he finds a small phone, an old one. He opens it, in the hope he can see by the light. The screen flickers greenly into life.

'_one new message' _ it says.

Tom shrugs in the illumination and presses a few buttons to read.

_'come round back,'_ the text says. He's not entirely sure who it's from, _'I'll take care of Belinda._'

Tom's eyes widen in horror, he struggles to navigate the phone to find the rest of the conversation before he hears something in the dark. As quick as he can he plunges the phone back where it came from. Two columns of light expand towards them in the darkness.

"Milo!" Tom calls, trying to remain calm, "Milo, you found anyone?"

"Yeah!" the werewolf responds, "One or two."

Soon he emerges from the dark. In tow he has three humans, a young asian man, a terrified old woman, and a small middle-aged man in a cardigan.

Tom steps back to allow them escape into the corridor.

"Hello," he says with care and caution, "I'm Tom, we're here to take you somewhere safe."

He holds out his hand, as politely as he can. The asian man responds in a stuttered whisper "Raj - rajesh..." he says. Tom smiles at the old lady. "Tom," he introduces loudly. The lady adjusts her hearing aid, "Maria!" she shouts into the darkness. "You'll be just fine dear," Tom assures before turning to the odd-faced man in the cardigan, "You alright, mate? Tom," he says.

"Arthur," introduces the little man with a relieved smile, "Pleased to meet you."

* * *

_Author's Note: yes the school exists, my description of it comes from a recent 'urbex' exploration with friends. _


	32. Knight takes Queen, Check

**Chapter 32 - Knight takes ****Queen, Check**

Alex grasps her hand to her cheek in horror, "Hey!" she protests, "He kissed me!"

"I beg your pardon, I did _not_," I insist. Alex looks at me with raised eyebrows, "I didn't!" I replay, "You _possessed_ her!" I look at Belinda in horror, in contrition, in shame. I come as close to blushing as a man without a drop of blood in his body is capable of doing. It makes me feel dizzy. My embarrassment overcomes me, "Regardless, I shouldn't have I was just so…"

"Horny?" Alex suggests.

My eyes purse slightly with annoyance, "Really? Is this the best time for _that_?" I ask sarcastically.

"She was the one who slapped me!" Alex explains in a harumph.

"You're a ghost," Belinda says, "I didn't really slap you. I just...swang my arm and your face got in the way," she laughs. "Get over it, it's not like I _drank your blood_." Belinda winks at me as she pulls herself to her full height. She stretches herself into her body as if it is a tight dress, wrinkled from over exertion. Soon she settles into herself. She smiles at me, "Hi, babes," she grins. "We can totally Oprah this fun-fest later, but best get you the hell out of this place first, Hal, if that's cool with you?"

She sounds the same but she has changed, if that is at all possible for one of our kind. Something is different. There is less bravado to her gait and small lines in the creases of her smile. If at all possible this place seems to have aged her somehow, or maybe she is simply wearing less make-up? Of course, she is still exceptionally beautiful, intoxicating to look at, with that Pre-Raphelite colouring, elegant neck-line, and inviting lips, and eyes that I could loose a day in. Yet I can see the pain she has suffered behind every move she makes. Her movements are tighter, they no longer carry the gregarious confidence that youth and naivety parade like carnival costumery. True, any creature who suffers the joy and an indignity of immortality has also to suffer their fair share of pain. Did I think she would not suffer too? Did I think I could protect her from it? After all this time, I am still foolish enough to somehow think Belinda Weaver would escape the worst trials of this life, or that I could recover my capacity to be the hero of hers. Such hopes are comedy at best. I am, quite simply, not that man any longer; or at least I cannot be without great sacrifice.

The problem is that, seeing her again, I am encouraged to _make_ that sacrifice. Oh, to be deserving of such a thing!

I want to reassure her, sire her, tell her that I have endured great agony in my time. I want to tell her that this, like any other torture, is likely fleeting. Now is not the time though, she is right in that at least. The time will come to soothe those scars, to kiss them away. I wonder if I show the marks from those times myself, if I have been aged by them. I will never know, I suppose, unable to compare my face now to the boy that once-was.

Despite her apparent ordeals Belinda seems to still possess tthe ability to shake it all away with a wink and a smile. It is rejuvinating to see be reminded of what had enamored me to her in the first place. She looks at Alex with the timeless distrust of a usurped suitress, before she quickly overcomes herself and buttons her shirt to cover up her modesty. I suspect she hurts more than she will ever tell me, the lover in me cruelly hopes she does, if only because it proves I mean as much to her as she means to me.

"Yes," I add, "Probably for the best." Admittedly I used to be _much better_ at having women fighting over me. It just feels awkward these days, rather like I deserve neither of their attentions. The fact that I have had two women come to my rescue has not escaped my pride. I am mortified, if grateful, for the situation. Is Tom is here too? Staking a swathe through the mêlée?

"Shall we?" I suggest, staggering towards Belinda with difficulty. She catches me up, warning Alex away with a nod that says 'i'll take this'. I hardly care who assists me, only that we make haste before...

"Belinda?" a voice behind us interrupts.

It is Stuart, returned from making his first deposit of my blood into the Collector's vault. He drops the pails he bares with him on the old tile with a clatter. They roll upon the surface smearing a crescent swipe of my blood on the floor like a smile.

Belinda turns. She looks at Stuart. Perhaps she knows he can stop us from leaving? I would place a strong bet he could, if his previous capabilities are anything to go by.

She assists me towards Alex, who offers me her arm. "Stu," she acknowledges.

He steps forward, oddly lacking in confidence now that he is in her presence. He seems quieter, shrunken by her nearness. If this is what he was like in front of her for all those years I am not surprised she never noted him.

"You came back!"

"I did," Belinda shrugs.

"I can't believe it!" He says with excitement. He seems remarkably pleased to see her. He bares the expression of a man who has worked a masterpiece and is standing back to admire it fully. Stuart's wide mouth lightens with glee, "For me?" I suspect he knows the answer, but is checking all the same.

"Hal," Belinda says flatly, "You shouldn't have hurt him, Stu. Totes bad idea, hubby dearest."

She too seems to be trying to fathom him out, but I can tell her mood with him from the darkening of her tone. It is threatening, coiled. Does she know what kind of man he is, I wonder? She must. How much of the man he has betrayed to me has she ever seen? He claims to have rescued her. Does she think this is his doing or the Collector's? One can blame the Devil and his henchmen for a great deal and get away with it, I wonder if it is a tactic Stuart is strong enough to try.

"He drank your blood!" Stuart says of me in an accusatory manner. He points at me.

Alex snorts.

I deliver her a 'not now' stare, then return to Belinda. "So did he," I explain snidely.

"It's not a fucking competition you know, boys," Belinda sighs, "What on earth possessed you to do that, Hal?"

"Me?" I ask, "What about him?"

"Pfft, Stuart's an sheep. He'd do what the biggest boy in the playground asked if he thought it'd save him a pasting, always been the same. You..." she looks at me with misunderstanding, "...I kinda thought...it doesn't matter." She seems beyond caring about it

"They made me."

"Likely story," spits Alex.

"She's a _vampire_ Alex, why do you think I would drink her blood out of choice?" I ask of her in annoyance.

"Dunno," Alex snides, "what are your usual excuses?"

"Time and place, Alex, time and place."

Belinda returns to Stuart with an expectant smile, "Anything else, Babes? Cause he also turned me into a vampire and slaughtered half my ancestors, and I'm totally over that. I'm a very understanding person. If 'he drank your blood' is the best you've got you should try getting out more. You, conversely, sold out someone I love for a career progression with a sadist, now _that_ is totally unforgivable!"

Stuart shrugs. He takes a sweeping step forward to meet her, snatching his hand up in hers with desperation. "Please, I can explain," he begs.

Something doesn't feel right.

There's a beep, the phone Stuart stashed in his pocket summons him, it trills oddly in the silence; marked more by his intentional ignoring of it. I hate mobile phones. The man who invented him was blatantly in league with the Devil.

"Go on," Belinda chides, "I'm listening."

Stuart seems speechless. I wonder what lies he will trot out in order to convince Belinda that somehow this entire scenario was explicable.

"Seriously, Stu," Belinda pushes, "Because, as far as I recall, up until very recently you were an annoyance. I'll admit that very recently you were surprisingly helpful, but then you were a selfish dick, and now it seems you're a psychopath. So please, I'm listening, have a go at explaining. I'm begging you."

"How do you feel, darling?" he asks, strangely, his confidence is growing.

I don't like this, I don't like it one bit. While Belinda is strong willed enough to give Stuart what for, and make him smart for it, I have a horrible feeling that _he_ is the one in control.

"What the fuck do you mean, how do I feel! Pretty pissed off I'll be honest, babes!" Belinda chastises.

"Yes, I can appreciate that but, how do you feel? Generally speaking. One a scale from Normal to..."

"Vampire?"

"...yes normal, for a vampire, or..."

"Is wanting to rip your heart out through your spleen, normal Stu?"

"For a vampire, I suppose that's pretty normal, right, Hal?" he asks me, but he doesn't look me in the eye. He keeps smiling. He keeps watching Belinda.

"It's pretty standard," I reply.

Alex nudges me.

_What?_ I mime.

Belinda shrugs, "Yeah, so normal I guess. What of it?"

He wraps his arms around Belinda in sudden, gentle, glee. He holds her. He looks at me with a wide grin, then he looks at Alex.

'Thank you' he mouths.

Alex points to her chest in horror, 'me?'

Stuart nods and the releases Belinda from his embrace. She seems unimpressed at having been so accosted.

"I fixed you," he says with a grin,"I knew it would work! I knew it! I told Milo, all we needed to do was get you back to the place you were turned, that a simple possession would fix your psyche right up and then you'd be right as rain."

"What do you _mean_ you told Milo?" Belinda demands. She has taken a small step back. She seems a little defensive of Stuart's surprising confidence. It is something I have become dis-pleasingly used to.

"When we got you out. Do you think he was stupid enough to go into purgatory on his own, no, he climbed into the hole we found you in and shut himself inside. I had to go get him. I told him, Linny will soon work out she can leave via nothing more complex than a murder, and then she'll head straight to..." He looks about as though he is asking a question of a studio audience in a garish mid-afternoon gameshow.

Alex, who watches far too much of that stuff to be called healthy, responds, "Hal?"

"Yes! A prize for the lady. The answer is, Mr Yorke. All Milo had to do was take you through purgatory to where you needed to be, and give you a nudge in the right direction. It's all very simple. We had to kill one to the Collector's stock but...it was worth it I think. Don't you?"

"I fail to see what the hell you're so pleased about, Stu! What do you mean you 'fixed' me?"

"The last thing I wanted was for you to get _there_ and have no reason to come _back_. I can't leave. Not yet," he explains. "Except for the odd stroll through purgatory, and it's hardly Butlins in there. So, I needed you to come back. The last thing I wanted was for you to come back and still be..." he winds his finger about his skull in an insane fashion, "You're hardly easy to deal with most times. High maintenance doesn't _cover _it! But _that_ I can fix, deal with, hell, even love; but being nuttier than a bag of rabid badgers is a different story."

It's dawning on me. What he's done to get her here. It's...a work of art.

"I told you, I would always find you Linny," Stuart continues, "And the best way to find something is to get it to come to you. So I did, and here you are, and that's all I need. My Belinda, the woman I love, sane, alive, and just right here."

"Great," Belinda sighs with boredom, "Well thanks and all, but we really must be off, places to do, blood to drink, divorces to file. You know how it is babes, have fun in Hell or wherever."

She turns to leave, then reconsiders, returning to look at him she asks, with curiosity, "Wait, so Milo knew? All along?"

Stuart nods, "Oh, big help. He's a good man. Top hire for Team Stu that one."

Alex suddenly sparks up, "Shit, he's with Tom!"

"Yes," Stuart nods, "That was sort of the idea. I mean, I wasn't fussed but the chap has a vendetta and he did on insist on 'doing it his way'. You have to make people think they're the ones in control. Hal, you know what I mean. It's just more fun that way, right?"

I decline to answer and instead attempt to draw Belinda away.

"Belinda, I think we should leave," I insist, worrying for Tom, her, all of us, "Now!"

"You can't," Stuart says, matter-of-factly.

"What do you mean _can't?_" Alex snaps. "There's a plan, and everything."

"I mean what I said, do you think what Milo told Linny, or you for that matter, about this place was true? Once you're in, you're in! There was one loop hole, and now it's gone, no take-backs now. Be my guest and try and leave, you won't get far. Everyone stays."

"Even the Collector."

"Everyone," Stuart replies.

"Weeeeeeeeell, Tom's lacing this place with explosives, Alex spits, "So, it's all going to kingdom-come anyway."

Stuart pauses, "I suppose that _might_ work, if the explosives weren't Milo's idea. I bet he built the detonator too, didn't he."

Suddenly, Alex looses her snark.

Stuart nods, "Thought so. I don't think they'll go boom, do you?"

"If you think I'm staying here you've another thing coming, Stu," Belinda adds, "Come on, Hal, Alex. He's full of hot air, always has been."

Belinda returns to me. She smiles at Alex, "I'm sorry," she says sincerely, "to both of you, if it hadn't been for me you'd not be here."

I shake my head. It's not her doing, I know that full well.

"Wait!" Stuart suddenly adds, coming closer. It's not wise on his behalf, as Alex seems as though she is quite intent on flooring him if he comes within and inch of me. "I mean, there might be one way..."

"Oh, right, because don't make up your of anything mind, babes."

"Just...just for you, if you want it. Not him."

"Hey, what about me!" Alex adds. I look at her in disdain what about her? This is her issue?

"I'll use it however I like, if it's real," Belinda insists.

Don't be noble, I prey, please Belinda, don't try and be noble; it won't suit you.

"Fine, come here I'll tell you."

"Tell me from where you are."

He refuses. "It's not a way out so to speak, I can explain some of it, but I need to show you."

She is at an impasse. Eventually she sighs and allows him to come closer.

"Go on then?"

"It's about your blood, you see? There's a reason that your blood, or the blood of any kind of supernatural is different," he says. "There's a reason the Collector covets vampire blood, any blood, in fact. You should see the werewolf stock he's got. You see, Belinda, Hal drank your blood, and now you could, if you wanted, get him to do anything you want."

"Anything?" Belinda smirks at me. She winks.

"Anything," Stuart says darkly, "He could, for example, if you asked in just the right way, walk outside and 'invite' you out before he burned to cinders, that would work I'm sure. I don't think I can help the ghost though, sorry."

"You could do it yourself," I tell him. "Take a walk outside, I dare you."

"Ghost," he says, flippantly. "I can't"

"Yes, but you're not are you?" I press, "Not really."

"It depends," he shrugs, "Want to know the secret?" he asks Belinda.

Belinda stomps over to the bucket on the floor. She swipes her finger around the blood on this inside of the pail and slips her finger between her lips. It's not the same as the amount of her blood which I drank, but it's still a gesture which I understand the significance of. "There," she says. "Now we're even," She winks at me. "So, Stu, you're going to tell me and then we'll make the call if someone's going to go to a noble death or not."

"Okay, so it works like this," Stuart smiles winningly. He walks up to Belinda. She let's him. He pulls her close. She rolls her eyes as he puts his lips to her ear.

At first I don't understand where he is going with this, then I realise. Back when were were walking through purgatory, I was right, he can't have just become corporeal overnight, ghosts can't! They can't become demon either! It's as simple as that. To be what he is now, to reconstitute himself from a dead thing into a not dead-thing, he would have had to have changed _before. _Perhaps the Collector did it. Perhaps his previous employers. Perhaps he had been this way all along? But, as sure as I'm a wizard with a duster, his blood was as supernatural as mine, as Belinda's, as Tom's! If what he claimed was true then Belinda must have had his blood in her system when she killed him!

I can hear the tone of his voice from here, the instruction of it, the intent, the persuasion. I know how that feels. I recall the endless encouragement of Snow upon my soul; the little instructions, encouragements, tid-bits that made me the vampire I was so happy to become, under his guidance. They stuck to me until I had the opportunity to shake him, his influence, and that horrible sense of willing hypnotism, away.

"Please," Stuart says, then whispers into her, "_be mine."_

When he releases her I can already tell that he has his wish.

Belinda kisses Stuart, in a way I could only dream to be kissed by her.

Alex grips me tighter. "Sorry Hal, I think you just got dumped," she says, patting my arm and trying to encourage me to look away.

My heart is broken, but through the rage for Stuart's cowardly trick upon Belinda's mind, I can't help but admire his game. He has everything he wanted! How well he had played the pieces! How expertly he had moved us all to get her here, so that Belinda would have _no choice_ but to love him, simply because he willed it so.

Somehow, though, I get the feeling whatever game he has been playing is more dangerous than anything I could have fathomed, and that it is not over yet. As important as Belinda is to him, and as much as I feel the loss as much as he probably feels the gain, I have the distinct sensation that having Belinda for himself is only his penultimate move, his 'Knight takes Queen, check'.

If I know my board games, and I know I do, his check-mate is yet to be played. The King is still on the board.


	33. Shhh

**Chapter 33 – Shhh**

Tom, Milo and the humans have been wandering around the old building for what seems an age. Whenever they think they have found an exit they turn and it is no longer there, as if each corridor leads to another window, each window into the next door, each door to the next room, each room to the next corridor. Tom is horribly confused but continues, where he can, laying the few remote charges they have brought with them. Milo wanders behind the humans. There is a beep.

Tom looks back but no one does anything. He thinks he sees Milo slip the mobile phone, which Tom had found, back into his pocket.

"Alrigh', so I say we stop 'ere a minute like and maybe split up of summit," Tom declares with annoyance.

"Bad idea, Tom," Milo says.

"I don't think it is, as it happens like."

"If we split up we could be searching for a lifetime and never find each other again. Haven't you realised, Tom, this place is not natural. It is as unatural as you or I."

"Sorry?" says Maria, the little old lady. She plays with her hearing aid, "Did you want something, love?"

Tom pats her on the shoulder with care and leans closer to her, raising his voice, "You just stay here Mrs Wosit! We're going to try and find a way out!" he enunciates.

"Okay, love, but I don't have a coat for you to find," she mishears.

"What about through here?" the small, lopsided man called Arthur interjects, "Looks promising." He pushes past Tom and through into another room.

Tom follows, if only to protect the man from the dangers he is sure await them. He is surprised to find that they have walked into a large, well stocked library. It is as dilapidated as any other part of the building they have been in. Many of the book shelves have collapsed in on themselves, piling book upon book on top of each other in little mountains about the walls, but much of the content remains in its home. Some of the books have rotted green, leaving a solid wet pulp scent on the air. At one end there is a fireplace. It has been lit, and the fire rages warmly, sending shafts of light out to meet them. It illuminates the insipid space with a flickering russet glow showing two great armchairs that sit either side of the hearth, a half-rotten book has been folded over one arm. The warmth from the flames heats the mildewed pages so they upon themselves curl greenly. On that chair there is a green cushion, velvet, faded where it has thinned from over use. And beside all this there is a table with an old gramophone on it. The trumpet sings out with a sweet girlish voice, bolstered by angelic strains,

'..._So get under their blue heaven_  
_Away from trouble and distress_  
_Just find Mother Nature's address_  
_And come and get your happiness'_

The needle on the record player arm lifts with a click. It swings outwards in a hauntingly robotic manner, sticking momentarily, before it returns itself to the record with a scratch. The childish voice begins again.

_'There's millions worth of golden sunbeams_  
_That everybody can possess_  
_All God's children got success_  
_Come and get your happiness...'_

"Shirley Temple, that is," the strange man in the cardigan says, "such a talent."

"I don't think we should be in here?" Tom suggests, he shivers. The place gives him the screaming heebie jeebies, but the man walks further inside with surprising confidence. Tom hangs by the door.

"It's fine, it's warm, cosy," Arthur says, and beckons the other humans, "come on." They enter obediently. Milo and Tom follow suit.

* * *

Alex is kind enough to spirit me away from the sight before it becomes too much. We land, bumpily, in a darkened corridor full of dust, leaves and detritus. I pull away from her and gain purchase against the wall before slumping down onto my rear with an inelegant smack. I feel so weakened.

"Hal," Alex says, gently, as if it is the sight of Stuart and Belinda in a clinch which has knocked the wind out of my sails, "You alright?"

I say nothing. She parks herself at my side and nudges me with her elbow, "I dunno, women, eh?"

I turn to look at her, "Alex, you are hardly one to provide relationship advice."

"Tell me about it," she smiles, "Look at the mess I'd have got into with you!"

I smile, "Admittedly, it did get a little messy."

"Aye," she grins sadly, "Didn't land your ass in Hell though did I?"

"No," I smile, "Not yet."

"Oi."

I rest, closing my eyes for a moment to try and gain some peace. Alex nudges me.

"Seriously though, you alright?"

"No, Alex, no I don't happen to think I am."

She takes my arm up in hers to inspect the wound as it closes. "Soooo weird," she proclaims. "Does it hurt?"

I nod.

"You don't look well."

"I'm not surprised Alex, I think it's best we find Tom. You think he needs assistance with this man Milo?"

Alex nods, "Sounds like it. Hal?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think he was telling the truth? About us being stuck here?"

I shrug, nothing about that obsequious young demon would surprise me, "Perhaps. Where is here exactly? Did you come through purgatory too?"

Alex adjusts her skirt over her knees as if she is cold, pulling her legs closer to her body, "Not exactly, I think Tom and Milo planned to take the M1."

"The M1?" I ask with shock.

She nods.

"That_ is_ quite hellish I will admit."

She smiles. We listen to the building for a moment. I think of Belinda, of whether she knows what Stuart has done; whether she will protest' whether it will wear off; how to help her. Then I think of my friends. They came here, the three of them, for me. I have put them in terrible danger.

Alex nudges me again. She pulls a face, "Cheer up sad-pants, it'll be okay."

"How, Alex? How exactly will it be okay? Do you know what this place is?"

She shakes her head.

"Are you religious at all, Alex? I never did think to ask." I want to take care not to shatter of her understanding of the world too much.

Alex shrugs non committaly. "It's alright, you've had a lot on."

I will proceed with caution. I do not want to scare her unduly. "So, there are vampires," I say, "Werewolves, ghosts…"

"..yeah, I sort of get that."

"…good, but that's not all."

"Not all?"

"No, nor is it the worst of it."

"What could possibly be worse than vampires? I mean that's pretty high up there in the list of pretty evil stuff."

I try not to take personal offence at this, "Many things, Alex. But, like anything, it depends on your definition of evil. There are certainly worse things in this world than I have ever been, or ever will be, vampire or not. I do recall a time, near about the turn of the last century when I would have never admitted as much, the arrogance of youth, but it's true." My words are slow, tired, I am talking mostly to stay awake. I can feel exhaustion creeping up my body like the reminiscence of a warm meal, possibly something of the virginal variety.

"What are you getting at, Hal?" Alex says, waking me from my distraction.

"There are myths," I continue, "there always have been. I have heard them all; in every country I have been, in every language. Every philosophy, every religion, has stories about places such as this. They are always marshaled, protected for the sake of our world. To stop us getting in, and the worst things coming out. I thought they were just stories, once. But I have learned most myths have an element of truth to them. If you follow most stories back you find something real at the end – admittedly, often disappointing, but real. Perhaps this isn't what you and I might call hell, but I can tell you that what we might call Hell _does_ exist. I have felt it. It's close."

"And?" Alex is trying her best to remain calm.

"Hell is leaking. I think there are cracks between here and there. I think there has been for quite some time. Why or what could cause that, I could not say, but, whatever Stuart says I think, it best not to attempt to destroy this place to find out if we can get home. If you think there is something evil in our world, trust me, you don't want to see what happens if you turn that leak into a flood."

"How are we going to get back then!"

"We aren't, Alex."

"Oh, no, that's not …it's just no' acceptable, Hal."

"Would you rather we crack open Hell with some C4?"

Alex thinks.

"You know what?" she asks eventually.

"What?" I say, trying not to loose consciousness, focusing on her voice and not the gnawing craving which is building to an exhausted tumult in my body.

"I keep picturing the final act of 'Ghostbusters'. Where all the ghosts attack Manhattan, and Mr Stay Puff is all scary, you know, the first one; no' the second one with the evil mullet dude because, oh-my-god waytospoilafranchise, but…well…it's reeeally ruining the whole, 'oh shit we're trapped in-slash-near Hell' vibe that I should _proobably_ getting te grips with right now."

As usual, Alex remains astoundingly unaffected by circumstances bigger than she can yet comprehend. She will get there eventually.

"I've not seen it," I say.

Alex throws her arms up in despair, "For Fuck's sake, Hal!"

I smile, "Thank you, Alex."

Alex's horror dissipates, "What for?"

"For coming to get me. I was...before, I wasn't doing well."

"No shit."

"Indeed."

"Plan B was a fucking awful idea, Hal."

"I think we have established that."

"I mean epic-ally bad, worst idea ever, seriously mental."

"You've made your point...can you hear that?" I can hear music, sweet distant singing. I am probably imagining it.

"What?" She says, then looks up, cocking her ear to hear it too.

I find myself leaning on her shoulder quite prepared to sleep.

She suddenly disappears, rentaghosting from beneath me. I loll downwards, catching myself before I hit the ground. "Alex?" I ask as I pull myself to my feet with the best of my might, "Alex!"

She returns. "Found them!" she says with glee, grabs at me and yanks me through space again. I'm honestly getting bored of the sensation, but can't protest or even walk well enough to be able to propose a more leisurely way of travel.

We arrive in a large room which is pungent to high heaven with spores of mould. I slam my hand to my mouth as soon as we arrive to shield the grime from my aching lungs and I am about to protest when I find myself surprisingly bear-hugged. It hurts. I hurt. But this is Tom, my friend. I have missed him and so, it seems, has he missed me. I'm normally not good with closeness, but at that very moment, to be embraced by a friend is not only acceptable, it is good.

I do my best to hug back, overcoming the awkwardness my proclivities engender in me, and pat him on the back.

Then I see _him_ by the fire, with Snow's werewolf friend, Milo, and two humans, one confused, one terrified. The Collector smiles and lifts his finger to his lips. It is the most simple, and yet the most stomach churning threat I think I have ever received.

I nod. I understand.

_'There's billions worth of silver moonbeams_  
_Enough for everyone I guess_  
_What's a million more or less_  
_Come and get your happiness' _sings Shirley.


	34. Under New Management

**Chapter 34 - Under New Management**

I lie in a post-coital haze upon Stuart's chest. I sigh. I feel so good. I feel dizzy, lost in feeling.

"I needed that," I say and wrap myself around him tightly. He is devilishly warm, laced with cooling sweat. He reaches out for his suit jacket, which lies strewn over the gurney, it is blooded with Hal's blood. He searches for a couple of cigarettes, and lights one. He offers. "Best not, babes, bad for the complexion, you know."

He doesn't smile.

"You okay, hun?"

Stuart takes a long drag on the cigarette he has put to his lips and puts his head back against the tiles we lie upon. He stretches out, sighs, exhales slowly and then turns to look at me. He stares at me for a while. I laugh. I am in love. Literally, _actually_, in love. I've never been in love before so I am not sure how it feels, but this must be it, right? I thought I was in love with Hal, but I couldn't have been, could I? If I had, I wouldn't feel this way about Stuart, would I? How did I not see it before? After all these years? How idiotic have I been! He was here the whole time. It is the first time I have felt like this. It is...freeing. Except...no, no it's okay, this is fine. Perfectly fine. I mean, look at him. I'm his, that's all there is to it. I know it in my bones.

"I don't want this to be over," he says, pulling himself to his feet and buttoning his fly. He tidies the buttons of his shirt quickly, grabs his suit jacket and pulls it on with a flourish. He finishes his cigarette in silence, and sighs, again, dropping the butt upon the floor he stubs it out with the heal of his shoe.

He looks at me. Just...looks at me.

I laugh awkwardly. "What?"

He says nothing. I feel horribly exposed all of a sudden and grasp for my clothing, pulling it on quickly.

"Don't," he says, "just, for a moment, let me enjoy this."

I wait. Sitting there, naked, for a time, as his eyes draw themselves over me. I am his, so of course I wait, but it feels so strange.

"You're so beautiful. Did you know? Did he ever tell you?"

I blush, "You don't have to say that."

"Yes I do, because you need to know that isn't why I loved you."

"It's not?"

"No, I loved you because...because I there was nothing else that I wanted more than this. This moment. I can't explain how much it occupied me. So many years, waiting for you, this, something...unobtainable." He smiles now, finally, pertly, "Thing is, Linny, I think it's only fair to say, I just don't think this is going to work."

"What!" I stand, grasping for my shirt and pulling it on. "No! please!"

He grins, "It's not you, it's me."

"No, please Stuart, you can't I want _you, _I love _you."_

"Of course you do," he says sweetly, "That is the whole point."

He swipes his tie from where it landed, slips his collar up and loops it around his neck, tying it as swiftly and elegantly. His shoulders are held back. He glows with beautiful confidence. He turns his back on me, picks up a metal tray and looks at himself in it. He sweeps the palm of his hand through his hair, neatening it suavely.

"You can't!" I beg, hopping into my panties, trousers, and scrabbling about for my shoes. "Stuart!"

"I have other things to do, if you want to help then maybe I'll think about it."

"Yes, anything!"

"Anything?" he asks, holding out his hand.

"Anything."

"Perfect. You wouldn't mind killing the Collector for me would you?"

I smile, "Not at all, Babes, not at all."

* * *

The Collector wanders towards the gramophone and lifts the needle. The music scratches to a halt.

"You look like shit mate," Tom drawls at me, finally releasing me from his embrace. He looks at me with a lopsided smile so wide I could post a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica between his teeth. He is wide eyed, hungry to hear how I am. "You alright, like?" he asks.

I can feel the adrenaline Belinda and Alex had ploughed into my system begin to fail me. The ache in my arms burns like lye. I need to feed soon or lord knows what will become of me. I can feel my skin stitching, my muscles bruising again, my body fail to deliver all it requires to where it needs. I eye the humans hungrily.

"Hal?" Tom asks, "You ain't gone all bad like, right?"

I try to smile, "It's been a long day." I say, "Who are your friends?"

"Oh!" Tom jumps excitedly into host mode, disregarding the oddness of his surroundings, "Well, you know Milo a'course and this here's Raj," Raj stares at me with terror, he must recall what I had done to the other, the girl. I don't think I even knew her name? "and this lovely lady is Maria," the old lady looks at me with concern, "and this bloke's Arthur innit?"

The Collector nods, smiles and flops down in the arm chair.

"Hello," I say.

"Hello," he replies.

Nothing happens. He just sits there, watching the others. I can't take my eyes off him. What is he doing? He is just, waiting. The silence is extensive. It feels as if all the sound has been sucked from the world, except the slow crackle of the grate and the pages of the book, which he picks up from the arm of the chair and begins to leaf through absently.

"So," Alex interjects,"This is awkward."

"Your friend," Milo interrupts, "he shouldn't be here, not around them." He is talking about the humans. He is right. I really shouldn't be around humans right now. Both of them look insanely appetising. I can't not think about them. I realise I am staring.

"It's alright," Tom says, "Hal's a good vampire ain't you, not been on the blood for a while, 'cept for that blip right, and, well s'pose we count Belinda, right?"

"Tom," I insist, "he's right, we should go. It was lovely meeting you." I insist pulling away from Alex. The desperation to leave, and take my friends with me, overwhelms me, As I move, she doesn't. I reach the chair opposing the Collector quickly and lean upon it for purchase. A sharp, dry pain stabs in my chest. My arm stings and tares again with exertion. I feel like a paper doll, shredding in the breeze.

"You want to be careful, my friend," the Collector says, "you might break something important."

"What do you want?" I ask him, croakily. Tom tries to come to my aid but I encourage him away.

"Hal, don't do nothin' daft now. You don't need no blood, mate." He can see that I am weak.

"Oh, I think he does," the Collector says.

"No, he don't."

I laugh. He clearly thinks I intend to attack the Collector. He must think he is human.

"Look at him; Tom, was it? Your friend is in dire need of a meal. He should just take it. He should just go ahead and have what he wants. Afterall, life is a little dull if you don't indulge once in a while."

"No," I insist, though the words seem dead in my throat, "I told you before."

"Before?" interrupts Tom.

"Sorry, should I have perhaps mentioned this is my house you have been planning to explode?" the Collector explains to Tom whose expression, in return, is one of utter bewilderment.

There's a beep. There's another beep.

Everyone looks at Milo.

He barely reacts, except to reach into his pocket and extract a mobile phone. He reads, everyone stares at him. Eventually he slips the mobile phone in his pocket and folds his arms. While I have been arguing with the Collector Alex has ushered the asian man and the old lady a far enough distance away such that I cannot hope to reach them.

Tom shakes off the anxiety of the bombshell the Collector has dropped, marvellously undeterred by how terrifying this man is, and huffs in exasperation. He puts the bag he carries down on the floor carefully and stomps up to Milo who stands as steadfast as Ben Nevis in the room. Tom is smaller than him by a breadth but this doesn't put him off. He puts one hand on Milo's shoulder and then, with a matey smile, pulls his arm back a great length and swings it forthrightly into Milo's stomach.

Milo folds with a cough, allowing Tom purchase to extract the phone from his pocket.

"Sorry, mate," he says sarcastically, "Only it were gettin' on my nerves that you're textin' like when we're tryin' to have a serious conversation here."

He flips through the phone, reading, his lips moving as he does so. In one moment his eyebrows raise, he looks at me, sadly, and then returns to the phone. Then he smiles. "Brilliant," he says. He turns to Milo and returns his phone. "Seriously, that's just brilliant, mate." He pats him on the shoulder, causing Milo to flinch at first before he realises that the intention is a truly pally one. "I mean that's _proper_ good idea, 'part from, you know, the bit about the bombs and that. Wasted the good stuff on them now. Gunna have to start collectin' again, like."

With Milo clearly chastised for his double dealing in, quite frankly, the most pleasant way possible, Tom turns to the Collector. "So this is your gaff then?" He asks. "You should get the builders in or something because it's proper drafty."

"I did," the Collector says, pulling his cardigan around him and wrinkling up his puggy face with amusement. "They tasted wonderful with some fava beans and a nice chianti." He bursts out laughing. "Sorry, just a joke, I couldn't resist."

Tom stares blankly, he looks to me, "I don't get it."

Alex sighs, "_Silence of the Lambs_." She rolls her eyes.

Both Tom and I shrug.

"Seriously, if we _ever_ get out of here I'm tying you both down till you've gone through the equivalent of my old DVD back catalogue, it's a disgrace. Seriously, a disgrace."

"You should get one of those internet subscription things, they're fantastic," the Collector advises.

Alex cocks her head sarcastially and shakes her head open mouthed at the man, "Thanks, that's great. Really helpful since we're apparently stuck here."

"You are," The Collector adds, "The curses are quite pervasive." He folds the corner down on the book, it riles me: bookmarks were invented for a reason! I don't care whether you are the Devil himself, there's no excuse for dog-earing literature. I find concentrating on this little annoyance stops me from crawling towards the humans - a temptation which is clearly overwhelming. I soon find myself in Alex's arms, not more than a few steps away. I am almost on the floor by the time she has reached me, weak at the knees but driven forth by starvation. She tries to help me to my feet. I cannot stand.

"Hal, seriously, focus you just need to focus that's all."

"No, I told you, he needs blood," The Collector insists calmly. "Rajesh, would you mind being of assistance?"

The asian man nods gleefully and tries to come to my hungry aid, but Tom holds him back. He seems astonished at the behaviour, "No! He don't need it, I told yer. You go back over there and stay safe now."

"I have to," Rajesh insists, "Please."

"No." Tom demands.

Alex interjects quietly, "Tom?"

"What?"

"Maybe...I don't know, he doesn't have to kill him, does he?"

I am astonished, surely, of all people, Alex would be adamantly against it. I recall how she had protested at Belinda's action back when Rachel's ghost had staked me, not to mention the countless times I had to be reminded what discourtesy I had done her.

"Here, Dear." The little old woman has come up beside me. She gently ushers Alex aside. "You can have mine. Never saved a life, seems like a nice thing to do."

Tom tries to step in. "No," she insists calmly, ushering him away, "You're a nice boy, you are, but you're not beyond getting a smack. I'd rather go at a time of my own choosing, if you wouldn't mind. This seems good enough." She rolls up the sleeve and holds her arm out to me. Her skin is like that of an old apple, it hangs to her thinly, but at that moment she might as well have been made of turkish delight. "Tuck in, my dear." I am not sure if her action is one of compliance, hypnotism, terror, exhaustion or simple kindness. It seems like it is a little of them all, but it is the kindness that leaks through. I look to Alex briefly, am I asking permission. She looks at me stonily. She will not stop me, I realise.

While Tom is not capable of manhandling an old lady, he is not above stopping me. But soon he is too late. I have clamped my jaws down on the nice old woman's offered forearm like a vice. I have taken a good pint or two from her before he manages to prise me away. I find myself wondering, does it count as a slip if she offered?

Tom is about to wildly chastise me, probably threaten to stake me, when we all look up. There is an incredible rumbling. A ruckus. I stare at the open door to the library, bloody mouthed and swelling into health with the old woman's blood. It sounds as if we are about to be ambushed. Something is coming. Something big. Something wild and uncontrollable. It sounds as if the gates of hell have been opened, as if the furies and floods of Dis have been unleashed upon the distant corridors about us. We are surrounded by it.

I wipe my mouth on my sleeve, in nervous anticipation. I briefly catch the look of disappointment on the face of Alex and Tom before I hear something behind me that is warmly familiar. We all turn again, our gaze upon to the Collector who has stood to his feet. He too watches the door, so intently that he has failed to notice the appearance of Belinda and Stuart behind him. Stuart must still be able to transport himself, there is no way he could have brought them both there otherwise.

Belinda laughs. It is that light, bell-like sound, which drew my attention away from fixating on the old woman's blood, which pours out of her, wasted upon the floor. The woman dies with a smile on her face as Belinda winks at me.

"Babes!," she says and then turns darkly to the Collector, "I hear _you_ drank my blood. Bad fucking idea."

The Collector stares open mouthed as Belinda pulls him close, slips her lips to her ear and whispers. We do not hear what she says, but when a stream of crazed vampires suddenly being to pour in though the entrance to the library, fixing their vengeful gaze dark gaze upon our tormentor, he is the only one of us that _does not move. _

He stays where he sits, as if turned to stone, glued preternaturally to the spot, as they pile in. Flooding upon us like the rats of Hamlin.

They are so intent upon the destruction of their captor that they barely notice us. There are hundreds, thousands. The space cannot hold them all. The din is astonishing, animal, full of rage and pain and a hundred thousand nights of torture. I feel all their agony. I even recognise some of them for the vampires they once were. But I can do nothing except shield myself from the onslaught and listen as they claw and pull and destroy everything the Collector ever was, shredding his Demonic frame like old sponge.

How Belinda and Stuart found a way to release my kin from their cages I cannot say, but I am grateful, I am grateful on behalf of every single one of them. Thousands of crazed vampires free is one place is not a good idea. What will happen next, given that we are apparently all trapped, is a worse one. But for the moment, I am grateful for their opportunity rain their wrath down upon him.

I try and pull myself towards him, only because I can no longer see my friends through the crowd. I call out for them, "Tom!" I hear him call back but cannot place him. Someone pulls me up to my feet, a vampire, dark eyed, wild with freedom. I am bounced a handful of them like a pinball.

"Alex!" I call out, attempting to gain bearing. I head nothing.

"Belinda!" I see _her_, at least, through the crowd. She looks at me, and it is as if she barely sees me at first. Then I see it something in her that makes me think that, perhaps, not all is lost. Perhaps Stuart's trick upon her is not going to be lasting, I can only hope. She fights her way in the opposite direction to the crowd, through the door.

As I try and pull myself through the mess of vampires, my strength still meager, I come upon Stuart, smiling.

"The Collector?" I ask loudly so that he can hear, "Why?"

"Because, like I told you, a job offer came up." He grins profusely, winningly. His voice is barely raised but I hear every word. He has the appearance of a man victorious. "Mr Phlegethon here had fallen out of favour with his employer, there's a big shake up going on. Restructuring, you could say. The pieces are moving and when _he_ comes to rise up into his rightful place then I'd quite like to be somewhere safe. Trust me, it might not feel like it but, when it all comes down, this will be the safest place in Britain. It's best you come to terms with sticking around."

I know now he has ascended, somehow, the ranks of his kind. Killing a Demon with such history is not without some reward in their world. He is more powerful now than I will ever be.

"When I heard that Rook wanted to find a replacement, and he asked me to scout someone 'suitable'...I thought, who better than _me_, Hal? To steer the company in a new, bold, twenty-first century direction? I can restock quickly, starting with you and Belinda. Both of you will be very popular with the masses I'm sure. We can make this a production line, it'll be much more efficient. Lower margins, greater success. None of this faffing about with teasing and torture and nicey-nicey stuff. You're vampires, you don't deserve that. I'll spruce the place up, perhaps lift those pesky curses so I can pop down the co-op for some fags every so often, and then, once in a while, I can let the woman who loves me out of storage for some rumpy-pumpy. Sounds like a cushti deal, don't you think?"

"But, I thought you loved her?" I call. He strolls towards me as if the crowd were nothing but a breeze, they swell around him as he oils through.

"I do, I do old chap, but after over twenty years of hoping she would love me in return don't you think I have earned the right to get my own back a _bit_?" Maybe I'll let her love me in time, but for now it's just enough have her want me. It was all I wanted, to have her long for me as I longed for her. You see? I find stuff, Hal, doesn't mean I like it when I get it. The fun is in the chase."

Just as I catch a glimpse the dust clouds pluming in the general direction of the door, assuming Tom is making his way through the melee with some success, I feel Alex grasp for me and we are away.


	35. I'd cut my strings for you

**Chapter 35 - I'd cut my strings for you**

The crowd of vampires is pervasive and heaving. They move blindly in one of two directions, either towards the Collector or towards any kind of exit. I choose the second option, searching for Stuart, and calling for him with love-lorn desperation, "Stuart! Stuart, please, where are you!"

I am outside of the library finally when the werewolf catches up with me. Tom yanks on my shoulder, "This way Linny!" he says and I follow with excitement.

"Have you found Stuart?" I ask.

"Was he that bloke in the suit?" he says pushing towards the light and pulling me with him.

"That's him!"

"Is he the one that brought Hal here like?" he snaps.

"Yes!" I respond with joy, something that slightly perturbs Tom but he shakes it away.

"Then he'd better hope I _don't_ find him," he says.

We are through the bulk of the crowd now, it has thinned. The air is thick, arid with dust. Through the light beyond, which streams through a large pair of open double doors, I see the stark outline of two figures, staring. Tom pulls us both towards them, pushing past the vampires who drive headlong into the fog and the light. One nudges my elbow, a young man, no more than a teenager to look at, he is unwashed, unshaven. His eyes are red, stinging in the dust and the light. He says, 's'cuse me' as he rushes past, looking back only briefly. He smiles. I could not tell you how old this vampire really is, or whether he had ever made a mark on the world, but for a second he makes a little mark on me. I hold up my hand in a small wave. After all he has gone through, like I had before him, he has taken the time to smile. It doesn't seem possible. He runs past Alex and Hal who do not turn to see us and then, in but a moment, he is out the door.

He enjoys only a few moments of freedom before he bursts into flames. We all hear him scream. Hal turns away, so do I. Tom and Alex can't help but stare.

The death of this vampire hasn't stopped the rest. They are all too starved and maddened by their experiences to avoid the same fate. Dozens follow. I place my hand to my nose and mouth, covering it over as I realise what the fog, amongst which we all stand, is made of. I have been breathing my comrades as if they were a sweet dawn.

"That's barbaric," Alex says deadly.

"Yet, effective," Hal says. "We can no more leave here than they." He looks to me, his face warms to see me safe. It makes me feel strange.

"Have you seen Stuart?" I ask.

His expression falls to sadness. Alex rolls her eyes as Hal comes closer. He puts one hand on my shoulder and the other on my arm and shakes me violently, as if I am having a fit.

"You need to snap out of it Belinda! You don't feel for him like you think you do."

"I love him."

"No, _no_! You don't."

"What the hell did he do to her?" Tom spits with distaste. I don't think he likes Stuart much. #notinvitedtothereception

"He hypnotised her, Tom, like Snow could do with me. It's...complicated. She thinks she loves him"

"I do!"

"Don't seem so complicated." Tom shrugs.

Hal arches an eyebrow and laughs lightly, "No, perhaps not."

"Did you see him then? Where is he? Is he safe?" I beg.

"I think he's staying here, but it's best you stay with us Belinda. We can find a way to help you regain yourself." His voice is caring and soft, as if I am somehow injured and require palliative words. I am not hurt! I'm in love! Doesn't he understand? I pull away from him, coughing in the dust as another swathe of vampires meet their end.

"I'm staying," I say, "I need to be here."

"No, please, you have to come with us. You have a plan, right Tom?"

Tom looks sheepish, "We did, turns out Milo ballsed it right up. We were going to blow the place up like, see if that broke the curse or whatever."

"Are explosives your go-to answer for everything Tom? I think you may have a problem."

Alex laughs.

"Here!" grunts a voice in the darkness. It is Milo, he appears from the shadows and throws something at Tom, which he catches it as the other wolf stomps closer. Hal is on defensive mode as Alex slaps Milo soundly, but he doesn't react to either. Tom squares up to the man and pushes him soundly in the chest to warn him away. Milo pushes Tom back. Hal's friend stumbles backwards but, before he can take another run up and start a fight we both know who will loose, the wolf interjects.

"Spare detonator," Milo instructs, pointing at what he had tossed to Tom. "That one will work. Dial Snow's number and the place will go up sky-high."

Tom guffaws as he checks the phone that he had previously read Stuart's messages on. "Yeah, and exactly how am I meant to believe that then? You've played us all along you 'ave. You're a disgrace!"

Milo finds Tom's words to be comedy, they bounce off him like rain.

"Anyway, I thought you wanted to be on the _winning team_?" Tom snaps.

"I am," Milo smiles a us. "If that grey smear thinks I'll stay here for the rest of my days he's got a surprise coming. I don't like cages."

"You want to help?" Hal asks.

Milo explains, "Get us out and yes, you'll have my help. If you ever need it. I get the feeling you'll be fine without my assistance."

I try to run to tell Stuart, but he holds me back, his strength seemingly returned. Tom grasps me too. It takes the two of them to stop me from running. "Please, Belinda, stay here," Hal begs.

"Stuart!" I call from where they pinion me, "Stuart!"

"Shhh, please Belinda," says Hal.

**"Stuart! STUART!"**

"Bugger me, she can scream, or what!" Alex grimaces, slapping her hands over her ears. **  
**

I pull myself free finally and attempt to continue to summon my husband, **"ST-"**

Hal has run to me, he has grasped hold of me with both hands.

He kisses me, stopping my mouth with his!

It feels wrong at first, a betrayal. Then there is something so comforting about it. The taste of his lips on mine, the salty sensation from his skin, the cleanliness of his teeth, the cold sensation from his tongue. I pull away. Stumbling backwards, holding myself with terror. The world is dizzy, everything is so foggy and wrong.

"Belinda?" Hal asks, are you okay.

At first I want to call for Stuart, on instinct it feels right, but then it falls away. My mouth hangs open, not knowing what to do. I stare at the silhouettes in the dusty light.

Tom, he wants to comfort me but doesn't know now. Maybe he doesn't want to upset Hal, maybe he just doesn't know how. He'll learn.

Milo, a slab of a man in the fog. He won't leap to my aid. Not unless it's good for him.

Alex, she loves Hal and will never say, not in a way he can understand. Maybe she could have been a friend, but Hal will always come between us, that is clear.

And a fouth, in the shadow, Stuart watches me. I think about everything that has gone before; of our childhood; my empty life; the vampires I had murdered; my mother, happy, healthy, free; my dead father; lost friends; of Stuart, and the boy he once was. I wonder when this child, who was nothing more than an annoyance, stepped on the path to become such an insidious monster. He tried to pull my strings, the strings of my friends, the world...he has been such a vile puppeteer. I won't let him do it any more.

Then there is Hal. Hal. I smile. I know now, I know what Stuart made me feel wasn't love. I could never have been, not really. When I see Hal, then, _that_ is love. It is love because I know I would rather die than see him suffer any more from having ever met me. That is love. In the end.

I step backwards, towards the exit.

Hal tries to pull me back to him, to comfort me in my confusion, but I won't let him. "Belinda, please, it's okay. It'll wear off. Just stay here, please."

I look to the doorway. The light streams in towards us through the dust in welcoming curtains. Stuart could lift the curse now. I try to find his shadow in the fog but it has gone. He won't help my friends. He won't help me.

I shake my head, "I'm fine, Hal, really."

"No, please, you're confused, disorientated. You don't know what you're doing. We've got a plan. Please! We can find another way out."

"It won't work," I say. "There's only one way, he said, I believe him. Let me do this."

I turn. I close my eyes. I think of that young smiling vampire, of how bravely he ran into the daylight.

I run.

**"NO!"** Hal calls

It is not just him. Tom, Alex, even Milo, join his chorus. I am sure I hear Stuart too. I hear them run after me but they stop as soon as I pass the threshold. Crashing past the doorway is quick, but it feels like I had run headlong into a brick wall of burning air, smashing through the barrier only to become lodged in the heaviness of it.

I try to breathe. The daylight stings so desperately. I look at my fingers. They have begun to catch light. I fall to my knees, landing in the dusty remnants of my fellow captives. It is inches deep and plumes about me. The pain of it throws me from my intent for a moment. It takes everything I have to hold onto my purpose.

Hal has fallen to his knees too. He tries to reach outwards from the dilapidated building to draw me in, but his flesh sears painfully as he does so. He snatches his arm back and clutches it too him. I see Alex try to push forth, but it is almost as if there is a great glass window before her, which she cannot reach through. "Belinda come back inside, please!" Hal begs.

The flames inside me are raging now. I feel like tinder.

Tom steps outside with pride to pull me back, but instantly falls. Clutching his stomach he riles about the floor, his body failing on him in pain. He calls out but tries to reach me.

This breaks Hal, "No! Tom, God, please Alex, do something, Milo? Belinda please come inside." He too tries to force himself out, in order to help us both, but soon Tom gives in. He returns back to his friends in the doorway at a crawl. Alex catches him in her arms and pulls him inside with desperation.

"You're such an idiot, Tom, what did you think was going te happen, eh?"

Stuart said all I needed to do was invite them outside. It _will_ work! I know it. He wouldn't lie to me. If there is one thing I know about Stuart it is that in all my days he has never actually lied _to me_. He has skirted the truth, twisted it, yes, but never actually lied.

_"Come outside,"_ I say, _"All of you, please!_ _I'm begging, you_." My voice is croaked as my esophagus shreds into cinders. It is the last thing I say before I fall to my hands and try and hold back the fire.

Something happens. First Alex falls forward, face first into the dust. Tom stumbles into the undergrowth to pull Alex to her feet. Then Hal, who tries to reach me, except that Milo holds him back.

I look at Hal, I want him to be the last thing I see. I try and tell him it's okay, this is good, it's what I have to do, but I can no longer form the words.


	36. Drop of Smoke

**Chapter 36 - Drop of Smoke**

It is 26 June 1999 and their parents are in Cardiff, as their respective fathers have VIP rugby tickets. They are all at the shiny, new Millenium Stadium watching the All Blacks. The kids have gone awol but no one has even noticed.

Colin, Belinda, his own girlfriend Aggie and Stuart have run away. They took the bus to some little shit-hole called 'Barry Island'. Stuart watches the girls play in the sea, kicking the water at each other and laughing wildly as Colin chases them both with seaweed.

Stuart has a chocolate ice-cream in his hand, and an ache in his heart. He has quietly realised that he is in love with Belinda Weaver. It's annoying, as he had tried so hard not to fall in love with her. It's predicatable, everyone he knows would. He had hoped to be different. He always knew she would be the death of him. Now he is convinced. He will die of a broken heart.

"Hello there young man," says the chap on the bench beside him.

Stuart turns to see who he has sat next to.

"Pardon me?" Stuart sneers.

"I said 'hello'. I was being polite." The man is well spoken, but his words are bitter.

The man is foul, lumpy, blonde. He has two small blue eyes pushed piggishly in his unshaven face. There is something of him that reminds Stuart of a corrupted cherub, one that has smoked too many cigarettes, drunk too much sacramental wine, and can now be found sweating outside a strip-club rubbing himself over the thoughts of what bounty is inside.

"Whatever," Stuart spits. He reaches inside his hodded top and finds a bottle of his father's brandy which he had stolen before he was so unceremoniously dragged out of the house to this Godforsaken place.

He and the man watch Stuart's friends play. Aggie bounces like a stupid puppy and waves at him. Stuart ignores her but she is too thick to notice that he hates her, that he is only dating her so he can be near Belinda.

"Pretty girl," oozes the bloke beside Stuart on the bench.

"Yeah," Stuart swigs on the brandy, it stings. He holds it out to the man. The man takes the beverage and takes a drink himself. He savours it. "What's your name young man?" the man asks, almost sweetly.

"Stuart," he responds, "You?"

"People call me Captain," he folds his arms in his lap, searches in his pocket for a ragged, yellowing handkerchief and blows his nose aggressively. He stuffs the damp rag into his sleeve where it hangs.

"You in the army then or what?"

"Or what," the man responds.

Stuart leaves it at that and takes a concentrated mouthful of his ice cream. Belinda comes bounding up the beach with Colin, at one point she stops and kisses him, laughing wildly when he blushes. She doesn't even like Colin, according to Aggie, she's just teasing him. One day she's going to hurt someone. Stuart knows already that it will be him.

The man at his elbow makes a horrible noise, it's a silly little laugh. Stuart turns to look at him again. He realises the man is laughing at him.

"What's so funny, Grandad?"

The man smiles in such a small way it is barely noticeable, it is mostly teeth and sourness. "Want to know a secret?"

Stuart shrugs, "Not really, peado." He swigs the last of the brandy back and stands. He throws the cornetto aside. It lands with a chocolaty slap on the concrete pavement.

Belinda appears behind him on the beach. He looks down over the cold, steel fence at her. "Aggie says your dick is like really tiny, Stu, is that true?" she laughs, "Can we see it, Colin says he'll get his out for a snog!"

Stuart blushes. The man on the bench laughs.

"Who's that?" Belinda giggles, "You've made a friend! Wonders never cease, babes." She skips away. She can be so cruel, but Stuart knows her better. He can see something in her that no one sees. He's seen the girl inside her, the one that is desperate to get out, to do great things. He's seen the woman that he knows she is going to become one day. She is going to be magnificent if only he can give her the opportunity to be. It's down to him, he knows it. She'll need someone to push her in the direction of greatness, a quiet encourager, a guardian angel. He'll be her angel.

"You like her don't you?" the foul man says with amusement.

Stuart turns back, "Yeah, what of it?"

"You can have her you know. You can have anything you want." His little eyes flash with glee.

"How?" Stuart asks, curious about this man. He is one part fetid, one part fierce.

The man's finger beckons Stuart closer, "I'll tell you, come closer."

"Fuck it, fine whatever." Stuart leans close to hear what the man has to say. He feels a clammy hand on his neck drawing him near. He feels the lips at his ear and feels the warmth of the old tramp's breath, it stinks like an unflushed toilet. His words bounce up and around in Stuart's ear like a persistent turd.

The message the man gives is like smoke, black, almost viscous. It drops into his ear like tar. It swims into him, and wraps around his brain, his lungs, his soul. It spreads inside him like poison. It washes around his blood, knocking the parts of him into a new shape. It opens up the paths in his brain and makes him see...everything.

When it's done Stuart stands. He stares at the old man in horror. He feels the terror and realisation that everything is...different. Including himself. He shakes his head, knowing now who this man is, "No, it's not true."

The little man smiles.

"You?"

Then he is overwhelmed by it, a feeling of comfort. It's all going to be okay. He grins. His soul burns with enlightenment. He feels...blessed. He catches a glimpse of himself in the shop window behind the bench. His eyes are as red as blood, "cool!"

"Come on Stu, hunny!" Aggie calls from the beach. Stuart ignores her, she is nothing, so...inconsequential.

"What did you do?"

The little man shrugs. "Always have a Plan B," he explains.

"You're right." Stuart suddenly realises, so much knowledge swims around in his head. It is as if he can see all the intricacies of the world, and how to tie them together to do anything, "I can have her, can't I?"

The little man nods.

"I just need to be patient, don't I?"

The little man stays perfectly still.

"What...what do you want from me?" he asks, aware that the gift he has been given, the sheer magnitude of realisation and depth of power is something that must have a price. His soul, certainly, but even that will never be enough.

The little man shrugs. "You know what I want. Run along now," he says with boredom.

Stuart nods obediently. He can see the rest of his life ahead of him. He can rule the world! He can be greater than Belinda will ever know. He just needs two things; one werewolf, one vampire.

* * *

I can't watch but I have to. I have to for her sake. It hurts more than I will ever be able to say, to watch her burn like that. Milo holds me back well. We fight briefly but only until I realise that it is futile. Tom has a tear in his eye. Even Alex, who can't seem to work out whether she can help or whether it is best not to. Belinda screams in agony and it takes my insides and wraps them in knots. I can do nothing but weep for her.

I am not sure how close her demise is when I see the door appear behind her. It is white, expensive, with a cherub for a knocker. Alex sees it too, and Tom, and Milo. "That's Stuart's door," Milo grunts, looking about himself for the man in question.

Stuart passes by us. Something is different. Something falls from him, it is dark, black smoke. It drifts from his cuffs in a mucilaginous carpet. Yet, as he walks, it is as if he becomes lighter from the exertion. Until he reaches Belinda and takes her up in his arms. He does not scold from the flames. He is just a ghost now, that is clear, whatever has poisoned him is falling away. I cannot say why, but wonder if it was the sight of Belinda's sacrifice is all it took? Something that truly did love her has overcome him. Something is giving him a chance to be a better man, something human. I've said it all along, _love_ is human, to feel it makes us overcome any monsters inside. Whatever made him into the man he had been, he has discarded, in favour of doing something better. Being better. Being Human.

Stuart's door opens. The light is pure, nothing like the darkness of the purgatory through which we traveled. Stuart looks at me as he pulls my burning beauty into his arms with concern.

"Be careful," he says to me. "Remember what I said. It's not safe here, he _will_ rise, Hal."

I nod.

Then they are gone. He rushes her into the light and the door closes behind them. I hold out in hope that Stuart was not too late, in the end all he needed to do was to save her from herself. I only hope he has achieved it. Maybe, if he has, I might see her again one day.

Tom takes his phone, he scrolls down the list until he sees the word 'Snow' and hits dial with a smile.

We turn, behind us the explosions ricochet through the old structure. It begins to crumble. In the last moments I think I see the Collector, perfectly fine, wave from one window. Of course, it would be too much to hope that even attack from a thousand vampires would destroy such a thing. In the end, evil survives I suppose? The trick is to get out of its way.

"Let's go home," Alex says with a sigh. "If we're quick we'll get home in time for Bargain Hunt." She smiles at me, and though my heart is broken, I know everything will be okay.

"Back to Plan A?" Tom asks me.

I hang my head, hurting from the hunger and loss inside, "I think it might be necessary, yes."


	37. Return to Sender

**Epilogue - Return to Sender**

"_If the girls at Cheltenham Ladies College could see me now!" _Alex reads, flopping on the sofa opposite and leafing through the morning's post. We have been back in Barry for two days, the house is a mess and I am exhausted, uncomfortable and starving. She has found another postcard amongst the spam.

"Show me," I say. Alex waves the card under my nose. The picture on the front is of a windswept beach at sunset.

"It's not from her," Alex says, "Can't be, they were coming while she was still here."

"You said the last one came from the hotel, the one in town?"

Alex nods, "Did you go look?"

"No one there, they said, 'cept for the regulars like," Tom adds, sweeping into the living-room with a yawn. "How are you doing this morning mate?"

"I've been better," I admit and try to get comfortable, despite being strapped into that fucking chair again.

"They've jobs going though, thought I'd apply. Gisalook?" He says to Alex, snatching the card from her hand and turning it over and over. He uses his vast deductive powers to come to an astonishingly unreasoned conclusion, it's like watching a lobotomised Sherlock Holmes. "She's gone mate, sad I know but we all saw it. This'll be just from someone messin' with you. Anyway, you don't even know it's for you, no address is there? Could be for anyone like."

"What?" I ask and so he hands it to me to inspect. I turn the card over with difficulty and arch as best I am able, in order to read the words. "It was hand delivered you idiot," I say, realising that there is neither an address, nor stamp on the delivery.

"Oi, no need to be rude. Know you're going through a tough time n'all but I've got feelings mate."

"When did it come!"

"Few minutes ago," Alex explains.

"Go after them then!" I insist. "Go on!"

Alex rolls her eyes, "They'll be long gone by now."

"Alex!"

"Fine, fine!" she disappears.

Tom parks opposite me. He looks at me with those two big sad eyes and sighs. "You want to talk about it mate?"

"No, not really."

"Look it's been two days and you ain't mentioned what happened."

"I've had other things on my mind Tom, if you hadn't noticed."

"It ain't healthy."

"Tom, I have lived for a long time, the one consistent measure of time is loosing people I have cared for, loved, loathed, even killed myself. I have survived for that length of time without the need to get up close and personal with my feelings. I didn't need to 'talk about it' when we lost Annie, nor the baby, not Pearl, nor Leo..."

"No I recall about then you would have rather killed someone."

"Exactly, so as you can imagine, _this_," I demonstrate my present captivity by shaking the chair, in which I sit, violently, "is probably a better idea than a conversation about how **fucking shit** it feels that yet again someone I love has died without me having the opportunity to say goodbye. Brilliant, isn't it, immortality. No," I feign calm, "no you're right Tom, let's talk about it. Let's talk about loss, let's have a good natter about _your_ ability to emote, shall we start with talking about McNair, George, Tina..."

"Nina!" Tom snaps.

I bite my lip, "You get my point I think?"

"You're in a mood. I'll talk to you about this tomorrow."

"Fine!"

"Fine."

"And tidy up!"

"No!"

Alex reappears. We both look at her, fuming. "What?" she shrugs, "No one about. It'll be okay, I'll get them next time." Neither of us respond, "What did I say?"

Tom stomps off upstairs, Alex looks at me as if I have done something wrong. If I could have stomped off myself I would, I make do with a heavy sigh.

"Back te normal then," Alex smiles. "One day you two will just snog and get it over with I swear."

* * *

It has just turned midnight. The clock on the mantle ticks the moments away methodically. I count them away and try not to replay every event and misdemeanour of the last few weeks over in my mind. I try not to work out what I could have done differently, said differently, or not done, not said, to have changed the events which plagued me now. I cannot get the image of Belinda's burning body from my mind. I cannot shake the taste of that girl, the woman, Belinda, from my mouth. I think of Stuart, of his warnings, his hubris, his passions, his sacrifices. I think of that girl who came to kill me all that time ago and all she had to endure since I turned her, murdered her, so selfishly.

Then I hear something, a little tick-tak of metal in the lock of the door. I turn my head. The door opens and I strain to see what has happened. I am about to call out for Alex and Tom when the beam of a torch shines in my face.

"Hello babes," a voice says behind the light.

My heart explodes with joy. It can't be! Can it?

I am imagining it! Aren't I?

I hear her totter towards me, she turns on a lamp on the bar with a click. There she is, Belinda Weaver, just as I would always want to remember her. Treacherous high heals, tight black trousers, a shirt that cups her breasts with staggering tailoring, and her hair so perfect it was almost unreal. She has a torch in one hand, and a stake in the other.

"Miss Belinda Weaver," I say with a smile so wide it needs its own postal code.

"And you're the one that calls himself 'Lord Harry', I presume?" she giggles, sitting opposite me.

"Just 'Hal'," I add, the warm amusement of playing out our first meeting is not lost on me, but there is only one thing I need to know, "it's...is it really you?"

"In the flesh babes, accept no substitutes." Her tone is not as jovial as I have heard it before. She seems to be holding something back.

"How!" I ask with astonishment, wonder.

"Oh, I found my way out of purgatory, took some time. Did you know that place is timeless though? I swear I was there for years, healed up nicely but it took an age, and then I found a door. I took the opportunity and left, Stuart...well he couldn't come. Guess where I came out?"

"Where?"

"Not where, when? Funny thing about that place, apparently it's quite handy for time-travel. Who'da thought it, eh babes? I found myself starving, naked and in 1950."

"1950!"

"It's been a ball, I'll tell you."

"1950!"

"Repeating yourself is _not_ cute Hal."

"Why didn't you..."

"Say hello?"

"Yes!"

"Good God, what would have happened?" She reaches out to me and places her hand upon my chin. She lifts it gently, "You'll catch flies that way, babes. I've been around, occasionally I would see how you were doing. I used to have ice cream at South End, watching Leo's old shop. I was rocking the shades and scarf look but luckily I can pull that off pretty well. I never came in, but I met them, your friends. They were nice. I've seen the world. I've done the most amazing things Hal. I've met the most amazing vampires. I've seen some phenomenal things, and earned a pretty penny thanks to some wise investments if you know what I mean. I've...I've not been as good as you though."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't keep sober Hal, I tried, for you. But it turns out I'm not as good as you."

"You can be."

"No," she smiles. It is a worldly smile, that of someone who has lived the life they have wanted and is ready to stop. I know that look, most vampires who reach it then shed the last of their human skin and become better monsters. "No I can't Hal, trust me. But I _was_ going to try. I decided to try. I wanted to come back to see you. I sent postcards..."

"It _was_ you."

She nods, "Didn't want to scare you, but after sixty years I have to admit I was eager to see you again. I just had to wait. Patience was never my strong suit, but I couldn't come until..."

"...after."

"I didn't think it was safe, not until you came back from Hull. Then...then the strangest thing happened."

"What...wait, what do you mean you _were_ going to try?"

"I was staying at the hotel, here, the Barry Grand. I met this...man." She worries at the stake in her hand.

"A vampire?"

"No, something else. He told me to do something I don't want to do." She seems so horribly sad.

"What?"

"It doesn't matter, what matters is that I've put it off for too long and it hurts to keep trying."

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to Belinda."

"I think we both know it's very common that we do things we don't want to, Hal. I didn't want to kill humans. I've been doing it. I didn't want to be 'with' Stuart, I did. I didn't want to leave you...but I had save you. That's life. It's full of doing things we don't want to do. I'll do what I've been told but I'm choosing to do something I want to do, first. I wanted to see you. I wanted to give you a gift. I wanted to say goodbye."

She stands and leans into me. She kisses me. It is a sweet longing kiss that tastes of patience and affection. It tastes like goodbye.

When she is done she stands and paces a little. I watch with concern. "Belinda?"

"It's okay, Hal. I have to do this, I have no choice. But I'll do something for you first...I'll going to ask you to do something you don't want to do. But you drank my blood so, you'll do it. I'm sorry, but it's for the best."

"What?" I have a horrible feeling she is going to stake me, whether she wants to or not. I call for my friends frantically, "Tom! Alex!"

She nods and walks over, she stands behind me. At first I think she is going to free me from the chair and then she leans down. She places her cheek next to my ear, "I love you, Harry Yorke," she says, "I always have, and I'm sorry. Goodbye, Hal. _You have to forget me._" she says, she is crying but they are tears of freedom. I hear the unmistakable crunch of a stake.

* * *

Tom and Alex arrive in the living room as quickly as they can. Alex rentaghosts to the bar. Tom trips down the stairs and over his own ankles with hurried panic. He carries Duncan in his hand and is poised to fight. They find me in the sitting room where they left me. I am surprised at their surprise.

"What?" I ask.

Alex looks around in horror. Tom coughs in the cloud of dust which fills the room.

"You called for us, what's going on?"

"Did I?" I ask, I don't recall calling for them. "Curious."

Tom walks around the room, checking everything. He passes behind me and pulls a pair of quite astonishing shoes from the shadow. He holds then up in the light. "Bloody Hell, was she here? Has she..." he says, then hops out of the dust. "Oh, shit! No."

"This place is a state, Tom. Tomorrow we're having a serious conversation about a cleaning rota," I insist. "How the hell did they get here! Honestly the crap you bring home."

Alex and Tom look at each other and nod. They seem to know something I don't.

"Sure, mate. You get some rest, eh?" says Tom.

He takes the shoes and walks to the door, he places them by the staircase. Alex puts her hand on the light, "You want to try and sleep Hal?" she says with surprising sadness. "I could stay with you, if you want?"

I think about it. I smile, "You know what, Alex, I think I'd like that."

She grins, "Boggle?"

"Boggle it is."

Funny, for a house with a ghost in it the B&B feels suddenly haunted. I feel as if I am being watched over as if something in the old building loves me more than I will ever know, and intends to keep me, and my friends, safe; whatever comes.

* * *

**_Acknowledgements. _**

_So, as they say "that's all folks!"_

_ No more Linny...at least not with Hal (who knows where she'll crop up if I get a bee in my bonnet and a good flashback story) _

_A big warm thank you for everyone of you that have read this and stuck with it from the begninning and those of you who have caught up on the journey since. Some Spon love for Seamaysae, whimsyfox, tangentiallyTJ, CatherineNewt, ShoePigeon & 0p0sitiv & MancVamp. Your reviews and engagement have been half the fun in writing this. _

_See you on the other side of Series 5. I'm sure it'll be a blast._

_Spon #thesponeffect x_


	38. Coming Soon

_Thanks to a nagging girlfriend; an inspirational new series; and the devastating news that the creation, which I have come to rely upon to get me out of a few nasty cases of writer's block, is ending... I have been persuaded to turn this into a trilogy. Yes. Belinda will be back, sort of. Part 3 will be different and will continue past the end of Series 5. First Chapter should be available this weekend._

***Coming Soon***

Part 3: Waiting for Grace


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